Parachute Silk
by Pauline Dorchester
Summary: May 1943: Circumstances at work have changed, and very often Sam's most difficult task is simply finding something to do. But one day an investigation in the Downs takes a surprising turn, followed by an even more unexpected detour... (Takes place about six weeks after the end of 'Casualties of War'; follows my story "Return Fare.")
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Sam Stewart, Paul Milner, DCS Meredith, Brookie, Andrew Foyle, WingCo Turner, Christopher Foyle, Edith Ashford, and some recollected dialogue in this story are all the creations of Anthony Horowitz, as is _Foyle's War_ as a whole, and I seek no profit by my use of them here.

**Caveats:** All of my stories build on their predecessors, and this one is no exception.  
Readers with an aversion to eye dialect may wish to consider themselves hereby warned.

* * *

MAY 1943

Milner and Brookie managed things quite admirably between them, in Sam's opinion. It helped, of course, that there seemed to be a bit of a letup during the days after Mr Foyle resigned; Sam joked that the racketeers and petty thieves and saboteurs were being quite considerate, really. Still, the uncertainty about what the future might hold was a strain on everyone's nerves. For a week there was not so much controlled chaos as carefully concealed panic.

Then Mr Meredith arrived and Sam, like everyone else, assumed at first that things would return to normal.

They haven't.

'He's A.C. Parkins' man,' Milner tells her one afternoon, very quietly and with a very slight shake of his head, before adding a bit sharply that she's not to repeat what he's just said. So the racketeers and petty thieves are pursued doggedly, if without Mr Foyle's talent for getting to the bottom of things. But a new round of telephone lines being downed is largely ignored, as is a second – and admittedly much smaller – fire at the docks. Mr de Pérez must have found replacements for Frank and Terry very quickly indeed, Sam reflects, although she keeps this observation to herself.

No harm done in the end, Mr Meredith always says: the lines are always restored quickly, which is true enough, and this time the fire was put out before it could do any real damage. (The first one had sent Sam's friend Helen Jones to hospital for two days, after she'd got all the other Wren ratings safely out of the telegraph hut. She'd get the George Medal if it were up to Sam.)

Sam's own days at work begin and end in much the same way that they have always done, ever since she was seconded to the police. In the morning she bicycles from her billet at Mrs Hardcastle's house to the station, then drives the Wolseley to Mr Meredith's residence. He's taken a house, one of a crescent of identical semis in St Helen's Wood, much farther from the station than Mr Foyle's house in Hastings Old Town. (Once, just once, she's driven accidentally to Steep Lane.)

When Mr Meredith is ready to go home for the night she repeats the process in reverse. Unlike Mr Foyle, he never tells her that she may go home before he's ready to do so; then again, he always leaves the station at half past five, like clockwork, also unlike Mr Foyle.

He's always ready to depart when Sam arrives at his house and has never asked her to step inside. From time to time she catches a glimpse of his wife through the window: a thin woman with dark hair and what strikes Sam as a hard sort of face, often with a cigarette in her hand.

Mr Meredith calls Sam 'Miss Stewart' despite her repeated invitations to call her Sam; he has never been at all rude to her but is even less inclined to make conversation than Mr Foyle was at the beginning. Three years ago Sam might have supposed that this was some sort of occupational hazard, or perhaps a quirk of character required of a senior police detective; but in Mr Meredith's case she has a nagging feeling that something is wrong. _Perhaps he was pushed into coming here,_ she thinks,_ and would really have preferred to remain where he was._

It is after they reach the station that it becomes clear to Sam how much her circumstances have changed. Mr Meredith needs to be driven to and from work because not even a police superintendent can get petrol for his own car these days; but unlike Mr Foyle he _is_ perfectly capable of driving himself, and when he and Milner go out to investigate anything that is precisely what he does.

'We need a plan,' Brookie tells her one day, 'before 'imself decides your services are no longer required. In 'ere,' he goes on, pulling a drawer out of a file cabinet, 'are the petrol coupons for the 'ole fleet of Wolseleys. You're going to be responsible for this, Miss Stewart, with immediate effect.'

And so Sam takes charge of ensuring that the Hastings Police get their permitted quantity of petrol and that it's evenly distributed between the cars. She makes certain that each car has a fully-supplied first aid kit. From time to time she dons a coverall and pokes about a bit under each car's bonnet. There are other small tasks. As in the past people must sometimes bring their children with them when they come to the station wanting to speak to a policeman, and Sam minds the children while their parents are doing so. But she is no longer asked to sit silently in the room while women or children are interviewed.

The fact is that on most days there is little for her to do. The thought of going back to the garage and Mrs Bradley is displeasing to say the least, but even so she begins to wonder if she ought to resign her secondment. _Not resign from the MTC, of course,_ she thinks. _If I were to do_ that _. . ._

She'd be subject to the call-up if she were to do that, and if she were called up she might be sent anywhere at all, _away from everything important. Well, no, _that_ isn't right – _lots_ of things are important. But I've found a life here. I want to stay on._

Andrew has been flying ops again since March and is still posted at Hastings, which means that they can still see each other, not as often or as regularly as they could when he was in Training Command, _but it's still a blessing to be counted,_ Sam reminds herself. They go to the pub, to the pictures, or in daylight to Alexandra Park or the Linton Gardens. Once, Andrew gets tickets to a touring company of _She Stoops to Conquer_; it's really meant just for the Forces, but Sam wears her uniform and no one looks at her twice.

When he can't leave the airbase Andrew telephones Sam in the evening or sends her funny little notes in the post. There've been no poems since then end of February; 'The well's run a bit dry,' he tells her apologetically, not that she's complained.

There hasn't been a raid on Hastings, nor even a false alarm, since the middle of March. That was a daylight raid, and Sam's friend Glenda Lyle had been almost comically furious; if they'd come over at night her searchlight crew would have thrown them off the scent in the blink of an eye. As it was their station had been wrecked, for Silverhill had borne the brunt of the it. It was truly terrible: thirty-eight people dead, more than twice that many injured, dozens or scores left without homes.

Andrew had been away then. After fully two years in Training Command he'd needed training himself, on the new marks of Spitfire. Ever since that raid in March Sam and everyone else in Hastings has seen and heard the Spitfires soaring along the coastline each day, and it occurs to her that Andrew's duties might be largely a matter of patrolling. He's not free to say what it is his ops consist of, of course, and she knows better than to ask. The exhaustion and terror that descended on him when he was flying during the Blitz have yet to reappear – another blessing – but he has told her that the strain of always being on the lookout, constantly waiting for something to happen and wondering if it will, is almost worse than actually encountering raiders.

He always gives her his father's best regards. Sam hasn't seen terribly much of Mr Foyle since his resignation. His goddaughter had recovered and taken herself and her son to Hertfordshire where she'd found a position. Mr Foyle had gone to Devon for a week. And one evening Andrew tells her, sounding bemused, 'Dad's begun writing a book.'

'A thriller?' Sam ventures after considering this surprising announcement for a moment. This idea is so ridiculous that it makes them both laugh happily and long.

'No, it's a... chronicle, I suppose – of what the Hastings Police have done during the war,' he explains.

'A view from the inside – except that he's not inside anymore,' Sam muses, hoping that this doesn't sound too wistful.

'Exactly. It seems a bit odd, don't you think? And the war's far from over, so it won't be the full story. Dad says he doesn't miss police work at all, but I'm starting to wonder how true that is.'

'You're worried about him,' Sam observes.

'Sometimes, a bit. Yes,' Andrew admits. His smile has faded. 'I don't think he has enough to do.'

_More things to worry about – **there's** something none of us needs!_ Sam thinks, sitting in the station's waiting area a few days later. There had been something else as well.

'What'll become of Dad,' Andrew had wondered aloud, 'if I... don't come back in the end?'

The front desk telephone rings, shattering Sam's reverie, and she looks up as Brookie picks up the receiver.

* * *

R.A.F. HASTINGS

'I can't emphasise strongly enough the need for absolute precision and accuracy in this operation,' Wing Commander Turner says. 'The Germans have behaved with tremendous cynicism, putting that works in the centre of a housing estate – the noise and the odor have got to be making conditions for people living there even worse than they must have been already. The _point,_ however, is that _we_ must adhere to a higher standard than the Germans have done. Avoiding damage to civilian properties – civilian casualties, above all – will require dropping the two shells one _immediately_ after the other, _almost_ simultaneously. It's at that point, I needn't add, that your troubles are likely to begin.'

Turner rises from his desk and takes two steps to the map of the two Channel coasts on the wall behind him. 'We have quite iron-clad intelligence that the area between Boulogne and Le Tréport,' he goes on, pointing at it, 'has been only lightly patrolled during the past month. Keep your altitude low enough on the way through and the speed you'll be able to achieve in those machines ought to get you past the enemy's ack-ack _and_ RDF pretty easily. You _won't_ have that luxury on the way back. You'll be almost bound to have set off the alarm by that time.'

'Understood, sir,' Chatto agrees. 'I've no doubt whatsoever that the three of us can carry out the mission and return safely.' He says this with absolute assurance. Andrew has heard this tone from his friend before; it reminds him a bit of Rex.

WingCo accepts this assertion with no expression of surprise.

'All right,' he says. 'What about you two?'

'I agree, sir,' Andrew says, hoping that he looks and sounds more confident than he really feels. _No one here is a novice,_ he reminds himself. _Not really._ His friend Robert Chatto, a Squadron Leader now, is an experienced bomber pilot, God knows, but he _is_ still new to the Mosquito – a 'plane built from wood, of all things. Andrew has flown escort missions before this one, but never as the _only_ escort. Two escorts might be more typical, more in keeping with the conventional wisdom, but they are to fly almost clear across France and need to do whatever they can to avoid attracting attention.

_But Robert's right,_ Andrew thinks. _We're good at the job, and there's nothing terribly complicated about this op._

'Goldston? Any concerns?' WingCo enquires.

'Nothing out of the ordinary, sir,' says Flight Sergeant Goldston, the Mosquito's navigator.

'Very well, then,' Turner replies. 'You have exactly eighty-three minutes.'

* * *

'Would you object if I were to take Sam, sir, rather than a constable?' Milner asks.

Mr Meredith looks at him blankly.

_Nearly six weeks,_ Milner thinks, _and he still doesn't know the names of the people who work here._

'Miss Stewart, sir,' he says. 'There was an investigation in that area a couple of years ago that took several days to complete, so she got to know the roads extremely well, and from what we've been told about this incident it's quite possible there'll be a need for someone with first-aid training.'

'Yes, alright,' Mr Meredith replies. 'One of the marked cars, mind.'

'Of course, sir.'

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's notes:  
**My heartfelt thanks go to autisticbisexualsokka, biskitty, i-findthishumerus, laylainalaska, mercurygrey, OxfordKivrin, peonymoss, rosalindfan, truth-renowned, weshallc, and Wolseley37 for their input and support.

In November 1941 the Mechanised Transport Corps gained official Government status as an arm of the newly-created Ministry of War Transport. This seems to have been a goal of the MTC's founder, Grace Muriel Cook, from the very beginning, but it proved to be something of a devil's bargain: in exchange for official recognition, the Corp's leadership agreed to allow those of its members who were from 20 to 30 years old and mobile – that is, without family responsibilities – to be transferred to the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the Army's women's division, which needed drivers and mechanics. (Conscription of women for war work began a month later with the passage of the National Service Act No. 2.) It's unclear how strictly this was enforced: I've found more than 50 newspaper wedding announcements from 1942 through mid-1945 for currently-serving MTC personnel, most of them marrying for the first time, which suggests that it wasn't terribly difficult for a young woman to qualify as "immobile." Nevertheless, this development leaves us with a need to explain why Sam is still in the MTC after 1941. This chapter and the next offer my attempt.

The de Havilland Mosquito was one of the most versatile Allied aircraft of World War II. Built largely of wood, and carrying a crew of two (pilot and navigator), it came into service in July 1941 as a photo-reconnaissance plane. Later adaptations allowed it to serve as a light bomber, night fighter, and fighter-bomber (the last of these becoming active about 12 days _after_ this story takes place).


	2. Chapter 2

Sam has brought the car around; she stands by the open passenger door as though nothing has changed.

'Thank you for this, Milner,' she says.

'Better not thank me until you know where we're going, and why.'

'Why? Where _are_ we going?'

'Remember Jackson's Farm, near Godmere?'

'_Oh_ – golly, yes. What's happened there now?'

'We've had a report of a Land Girl being assaulted.'

'Assaulted,' Sam echoes after considering this for a few seconds, 'in what manner?'

Milner's nod tells her that she's been understood.

'That's one reason why I wanted you to make this call with me,' he explains. 'We don't know precisely _what_ happened. Tom Jackson telephoned us – he's in charge there now, apparently, must have managed to get reserved status after all – but it seems he didn't actually see the incident take place. The only witnesses are some young field workers the woman was supervising.'

'How young?'

'Children. Which is another reason I thought it best that you come along.'

By now they are in Filsham Road, heading towards the Downs.

'A Land Girl,' Sam repeats. 'I wonder if the same girls are still there.'

Milner glances at his notes.

'The assault victim's name was given as Sally Hazelgrove.'

'No. The ones we met there were called Joan Dillon and Rose Henshall. A bit unpleasant, as I recall – or at least Joan was.' Milner glances at her. 'And there was Mrs Hicks, of course, but she was in the Timber Corps,' Sam goes on. 'Well, thank you in any case, Milner. It's _awfully_ good to be properly on the job again!'

'Best not to get used to it,' Milner replies. He is silent for a moment before asking, 'What are you going to _do,_ Sam?'

Sam is silent in turn.

'I don't know _what_ I ought to do,' she admits at last. She explains her dilemma: stay with the police and feel useless; leave the police but stay with the MTC and go back to Mrs Bradley's command ('I remember _her,_ all right,' Milner remarks feelingly); or leave the MTC and put herself at the mercy of the Ministry of Labour and National Service.

'And surely it would make me look ungrateful,' she continues, 'after Mr Foyle ' – _pulled strings,_ she thinks;_ well, after all,_ _that _is_ the truth _– 'made such an _effort_ to help me remain in the MTC. Most girls my age were booted out at the end of 1941.'

'Yes, I remember that.'

'And of course we _both_ knew that one of the reasons that he did that was so that Andrew wouldn't have to go searching for me when he came back here from Debden on leave – which he never _was_ allowed to do. But he _is_ here now, at least for the time being, and if _I_ were to be called up I could be sent anywhere at all! And all of my friends are here! So I simply don't know. What are _you_ going to do, Milner?' she asks, adding, 'I don't only mean about work,' when he looks at her uncertainly.

'Well, that's a good question, I suppose,' Milner replies. 'The thing is, it hasn't even been six months yet that Jane's been dead. Her family have been... pretty unpleasant, to be honest. She still has some relations in Haslemere, and one of them's been... tormenting the Ashfords, for lack of a better way of putting it.'

'You _don't_ mean to say that they think that _Edie_ had something to do with it!?'

'Apparently they've decided just that.'

'That's _horrid.'_

'And Edie – well, did you see that notice in the paper about the, um, nurses' order... '

'The Nurses and Midwives Registration for Employment Order,' Sam says as Milner trails off. 'I did. They aren't sending Edie away somewhere, are they?'

'We don't know yet – she's going to be interviewed on Tuesday. I rather doubt it, though,' Milner adds, sounding more confident. 'The point seems to be to fill in the gaps wherever there's a shortage of nurses, and there already _is_ a shortage at St Mary's.'

'So sending Edie away would only make things worse! There's a midwife who lives at my billet – she was interviewed on Monday and was told to remain where she is. She was _quite_ relieved. Of course,' Sam continues hesitantly, 'I suppose that if Edie... '

'Being married seems to make no difference these days, if that's what you're thinking,' Milner tells her, Sam having trailed off into silence.

* * *

Andrew is no longer so madly in love with flying as he was when he got his wings and reported for duty. Having learnt to do so – and having become, well, _somewhat_ skilled at it – is a real accomplishment. He knows this. Perhaps it's even a source of pride. But he understands the dangers far more clearly now, and how difficult it is to avoid them. He knows what can happen in the air. He knows, as well, how spent he'll be after he lands.

This moment, though, when he sees the ground dropping away from under him and the horizon beginning to curve, never fails to thrill him. This is what always makes him think of how brilliant it would be to take Sam up in a 'plane one day, after the war is over and the sky is safe. _Of course it's no good thinking about that in a Spit ..._

_Sometimes I can't stand it because you're not with me._ He'd been nearly out of his mind with exhaustion and fear when he'd said that to Sam, but it had been the truth, and although he likes to think he's in better control of himself now, something like it is still true. _A Mosquito would be better – brilliant, really, we'd be able to sit side by side ..._

_Stick to the task at hand, Foyle,_ he chides himself. He pulls the Spit into formation, a thousand feet above the Mosquito, on its port side and slightly ahead of it. There's a brisk wind from the north.

* * *

It's Tom Jackson himself who meets the car at the entrance to the farm. He gives Milner a nod of recognition but doesn't appear to remember Sam. Sally Hazelgrove, he explains, is still at the spot where the incident took place. He suspects that she's more seriously hurt than she understands.

'Something wrong with her shoulder. Wanted to get an ambulance but she wouldn't have it,' he says.

'Can we bring the car to where she is?' Milner asks.

'Yeah, very near to. Up this way and turn left.'

'Why don't you get in and we'll give you a ride,' Sam offers, adding, 'I have a first-aid kit in the boot.'

'When did the incident occur?' Milner asks Tom. 'I realise that you didn't see it.'

'Must've been an hour and a quarter ago that Nancy Niles came to the barn to tell us. We're not on the telephone,' Tom explains. 'My dad – you remember him – was too tight-fisted for that, and now you can't get a line put in for love or money, so I had to go to the callbox up Godmere Road.'

Sam drives the car past the farmhouse, barn and cottage that she remembers from two years earlier until the packed-earth track ends at an open field. A young woman wearing a Land Army uniform and what Sam silently identifies as a stoical expression is sitting under a beech tree, her back resting against it gingerly, putting all of the weight on her right side. Arrayed about her are eleven children, looking variously protective, bewildered and bored.

_It's term time, isn't it? What are they doing here?_ Milner thinks of Michael Richards and his house school, and of the children he'd interviewed after the man's murder.

'Miss Hazelgrove, my name is Milner – I'm a policeman. How are you feeling?'

'Me shoulder hurts, on t' left side,' Sally Hazelgrove says, sounding very much as though she would prefer not to admit this.

'I need to ask you some questions. Are you feeling up to that?'

'Would you like me to take a look at your shoulder first?' Sam volunteers. Sally, who is holding her left arm at an awkward angle, eyes her a bit suspiciously.

'That's nivver a nurse rig-out you got on,' she points out.

'Well... no, I'm not a nurse, but I _am_ trained in first aid and I've got _this,'_ Sam explains in what she hopes is an encouraging voice as she holds up the first-aid kit that she's brought from the car.

'I suppoase ye'd best do,' Sally allows.

This will call for more privacy than the setting allows, Sam decides. If Miss Hazelgrove's shoulder is injured she won't be able to get her jumper off without help, and then there's the matter of removing her blouse. The car might offer the best chance.

Two more people join the group while she is thinking about this, coming over the gentle hill that Sam has just driven past: first a blonde girl about eighteen months old toddles up to Tom, joyfully shrieking 'Pa!' and demanding to be lifted up, which Tom does, hushing her. She is followed closely by a woman, visibly pregnant, whom Sam recognises with a start as Joan Dillon – _or I suppose she must be Joan Jackson now,_ Sam thinks. Joan doesn't notice Sam and Milner, or perhaps she simply ignores them.

'Sorry, love,' she tells Tom, smiling. 'Couldn't keep 'er in the garden any longer. Got a mind of 'er own, like always.'

'It's all right,' Tom replies. 'We could do with you here, most likely. The police are here,' he adds, nodding towards Milner.

Joan turns in their direction and gives a start of recognition as she sees Milner, followed by a faintly sour look when her gaze turns to Sam.

'Good morning, um, Mrs Jackson,' Milner begins. Joan makes no reply of any sort, so he continues: 'I'm going to have to interview Miss Hazelgrove and anyone who saw the incident. First, though... ' He trails off.

'Miss Hazelgrove says that her shoulder is quite sore, and I'd like to have a look at the injury,' Sam tells Joan.

'Oh, Lady Muck's in the FANYs now, is that it?' Joan shoots back.

'No,' Sam replies as evenly as she can manage, 'I'm still in the MTC and I still work for the police. Everyone in the MTC is trained in first aid.' She turns back to Sally. 'Do you think that you can walk to the car?' she asks. 'I'll help you to get up.'

Sam puts an arm about Sally's very slim waist and, being careful not to put any pressure on her left shoulder or arm, helps her to rise. Her blouse, Sam notes, has come untucked from her trousers at the back.

'Just over there,' she says, nodding towards the car.

* * *

'Nicanor navigation to Amyntas,' Andrew hears Goldston say through the radio. 'Ought to be able to see the coast of France in about ten seconds, sirs.'

'Waiting with baited breath,' says Andrew.

'Radio silence until farther notice, gentlemen, if you please,' Chatto breaks in.

'Understood.'

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's notes:**  
The Nurses and Midwives Registration for Employment Order (Statutory Rule & Order 1943/511), issued by the Ministry of Labour and National Service, required all nurses and midwives born between March 31st, 1883, and April 1st, 1926, regardless of gender or marital status, to register with an employment exchange. By the beginning of August roughly 400,000 people had complied, but about 75% of them were either already employed in some type of nursing work or had infirmities or family responsibilities that prevented them from returning to such work. This raised the possibility that some nurses already employed as such would need to be relocated to sites where shortages existed.

This account of Andrew's adventure, which will continue in subsequent chapters, draws on many sources, most notably _The Spitfire Log: A 50__th__ Anniversary Tribute to the World's Most Famous Fighter Plane_, compiled by Peter Haining (London: Souvenir Press, 1985), _Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering,_ by Robert L. Shaw (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1985), and _Here is the News: The BBC and the Second World War,_ by Richard Havers (Stroud: The History Press, 2007). Ultimately, however, it is a product of my imagination, and the responsibility for any implausibilities or outright errors that it contains rests solely with me.

The Sussex patois spoken by some of the characters in this story owes substantial debts to _A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect and Collection of Provincialisms in Use in the County of Sussex,_ by W. D. Parish (1875; available at the Internet Archive) and, in particular, Stella Gibbons' novel _Cold Comfort Farm_ (1932), which is also the source of the place names I've used here.

The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry – also known, since 1999, as the Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps and often referred to as the FANYs, pronounced _Fannies_ – is a women's volunteer organization founded in 1907. Members were not trained as nurses, but were originally required to hold qualifications in both first aid and home nursing (as well as in horsemanship, since it had been observed that a single rider could transport a casualty to a field hospital more quickly than a horse-drawn ambulance). During both World Wars, the FANYs became involved in signals, coding, and espionage. During World War II about 2,000 FANYs worked with and for the Special Operations Executive, Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan among them. The World War II FANY service dress uniform was nearly indistinguishable from those of the Women's Legion, the Auxiliary Territorial Service and the Mechanised Transport Corps. Other things that the FANY had in common with the MTC were the adoption of a military-style rank structure and a supposed preference for members recruited from the upper echelons of the social scale. The organization remains active today and is still open only to women, and its service dress uniform is largely unchanged from the 1940s.


	3. Chapter 3

At the car Sam opens one of the doors to the back seat and motions for Sally to sit down on the seat's edge.

'If you can raise your right arm, I can get your jumper part of the way off,' she says. 'Yes, just like that. Jolly good.'

She goes round to the other side of the car, climbs onto the back seat and with some difficulty – _oh, for Civil Defense trousers!_ – crawls to the other end so that she is directly behind Sally.

'I'll have to lift up your blouse here in the back,' she cautions.

'_Oohh_ – well, ay, do as ye mun.'

It occurs to Sam that she can remember meeting, if not Sally herself, then someone who looks rather like her before now, and also that this is an odd moment at which to have such a thought.

Regardless, Sam doesn't like what she sees. The skin isn't broken, but the shoulder is swollen and what promises to be an extremely large bruise is beginning to come up.

'Miss Hazelgrove, I really _do_ think that you ought to have an ambulance. I can give you aspirin for the pain, but your shoulder ought to be x-rayed.'

'Tisn't broken, shurlie?' Sally asks, horrified. 'I'll be furloughed, belike!'

'I'm afraid that it _might_ be – or it might be disclocated.' _Whoever did this must have hit her jolly hard,_ Sam thinks. 'Are you... injured anywhere else?' she goes on carefully.

'Nay.'

'You're _quite_ sure?'

'Methinks I know _where_ I bin hurt!' Sally exclaims, sounding indignant.

Sam gets out of the car and goes round to its other side so that she can speak to Sally face-to-face.

'Miss Hazelgrove... Sergeant Milner is going to ask you to tell him _everything_ that you remember about what happened to you today,' she explains. 'If there's anything that you'd prefer to say to _me_ instead... well, please do.'

Sally stares at her for a moment, clearly puzzled and perhaps also suspicious. Then at once her face clears.

'I weren't _ravished_, if _that's_ what yer asking," she announces. She sounds, to Sam's ears, oddly defensive.

'All right,' Sam replies. 'I'm certainly glad to hear that.' She helps Sally to put her blouse and jumper back into place and tells her to stay where she is. Then she goes back to the group waiting near the tree.

'Miss Hazelgrove's shoulder is injured rather badly – I think that she may have dislocated it,' she tells Milner and the Jacksons. Tom looks stricken; Joan curses under her breath, then blushes. 'She's agreed to have an ambulance called, and I do think that it would be a good idea,' Sam continues. 'She needs an x-ray.'

'The callbox is just up Godmere Road a bit,' Joan tells her.

'I need Miss Stewart to remain here while I interview Miss Hazelgrove and any of the children who saw the incident,' Milner says firmly. 'I'd be very obliged if _you'd_ go, Mrs Jackson. I can take Miss Hazelgrove's statement while we wait for the ambulance.'

Joan now looks infuriated, but, 'I think you'd best go, Joanie,' Tom tells her. She takes off with a look of poor grace while Sam and Milner begin to walk towards the car. They are briefly trailed by one of the younger boys, who is quickly restrained by an older child.

'Miss Hazelgrove told me that she wasn't... molested,' Sam tells Milner quietly.

'Well, that's good to hear. Assuming you believe her, of course. _Do_ you believe her?'

Sam nods.

'I'm not sure that it would do us any good _not_ to believe her,' she says, 'and the odd thing is that she behaved as though I were asking her whether _she'd_ done anything wrong. But yes – I do believe her.'

•

Her proper name, Sally informs Milner, is Sarah Lucy Hazelgrove. She is twenty-five years old, comes from Howling, quite near to here, and has been in the Women's Land Army 'since t' very start,' she announces with visible and audible pride. Before that she was an assistant in her father's ironmonger's shop.

'You haven't been working on _this_ farm the whole time, though,' Milner points out.

'Nay – only since Trinity last. T' Land Army sent me to a gurt farm in Uckfield first. Some nice girls there, there was. But 'twas too far awa'.'

Sam and Milner exchange a glance; Uckfield is perhaps twenty minutes away in the car.

'I dunna how people can _live,_ so far from whoam,' Sally goes on seriously. 'So I puts in fer a transfer.'

'And can you describe what happened this morning, Miss Hazelgrove? I gather that you didn't see your attacker.'

'Oh, I seen 'un, all right – when 'un were runnin' awa', after I flipped 'un over!'

'What happened _before_ that?' Milner asks after digesting this for a second or two.

'I was a'walkin' towards t' cabbage field, awa' from t' Godmere Road hedge -'

'Near the tree where you were sitting a few minutes ago?'

'Ay, there. An' I didn't _hear_ anythin', mind. But I felt summat take hold on my shoulder – the right one – an' then 'un punched me _other_ shoulder – real hard, like – and then 'un puts 'un's arm about me neck.' Sally relates all this this with an almost eerie calm. 'Un wouldn't let go, so I flips 'un o'er me onto 'un's backside,' she continues.

An ambulance bell becomes audible, not far off and drawing nearer.

'What did he do after that?'

'Get up an' run awa' like a frittened coney, 'un did!'

'You must have taken him by surprise,' Milner remarks. Certainly this girl doesn't look as though she could do such a thing: too slim, almost fragile-looking. 'Out of curiosity, where did you learn to, er, flip an attacker over in that way?' he asks.

'Me brother showed me how, the last time me an' 'un was on leave at t' same time. He'm in t' Royal Marines,' she explains proudly.

'I see. And what did you see after you flipped the man over? It _was_ a man, I take it?'

'Oh, ay. 'Un was a _liddle_ man. Not like one o' they people in t' talkies, I mean, that are no bigger nor a wennet. But 'un was scrawny-like, and I'd wager 'un was no taller nor meself.'

'Did you see his face?'

'Nay, not really.'

'Well... what about when he was running away?' Milner asks. 'What did his hair look like, could you tell?'

'Very curly, and – not black, but dark grey, belike.'

Tom appears, the tiny blond girl trailing after him.

'They're here,' he announces.

* * *

_Done it,_ Andrew thinks; _WingCo was right._ There seems to be no one at all watching this bit of the French coastline. The ack-acks haven't noticed them and by now they're out of range of the German RDF. He tilts the Spit slightly to starboard to signal Chatto and begins a steep climb. The Mosquito follows suit, pulling ahead as it does so, and they fly upwards until they are above the clouds.

* * *

The ambulance having made its departure with Sally aboard, bound for the cottage hospital in Godmere, Milner and Sam turn their attention to the assembled children.

'Who here saw what happened to Miss Hazelgrove?' Milner asks them.

He is relieved when only what look to be the two oldest – a girl of fourteen or fifteen and a slightly younger boy – raise their hands, although they are quickly followed by one of the youngest, a girl who might not yet be four. This draws an annoyed glance from the boy.

'Doan't pay 'un no mind,' he tells Milner. 'She'm naught but a mommet.'

'Am _not!'_ the little girl shouts at him, her dignity deeply offended. The other children laugh.

'All right. I'll need you to keep everyone in order for a few minutes,' Milner tells the older girl, who nods solemnly, 'while I ask you some questions,' he goes on, turning to the boy. 'Let's go over here,' he adds, motioning towards the car. 'Miss Stewart will come with us.'

•

The boy's name is Luke Henshaw, and Milner has guessed correctly: he is thirteen. He comes from Beershorn and notes, 'All on us is from Beershorn or Howling.'

'And what did you see, when Miss Hazelgrove was assaulted? Or what did you hear?'

'Ay, I _heard_ it first – I heard 'un scream!'

'You heard _who_ scream?'

'Miss Hazelgrove, o' course,' Joe replies, with the air of someone long resigned to having to explain things to those not quite as quick on the uptake as he.

'Ah, I see. Thank you. What happened after that?'

'I spun right 'round to see what were happenin'. I'd 'a' gone to help 'un, but bythen I were half t' way there 'un had 'un on t' ground, like. 'Twas wonderful!'

'Do you mean that Miss Hazelgrove threw her attacker to the ground?'

'Ay – but not like this!' Luke gets up off of the car seat and demonstrates shoving an imaginary person in front of him. 'Nay – t' man were _behind_ 'un, with 'un's arm about 'un's neck, and 'un wratched back and holled 'un over 'un's shoulder.'

'I see. Can you tell us what the man looked like?'

''Un weren't a very gurt man,' Luke says thoughtfully.

'Short?'

'Ay, an' a right windshaken creature – like Miss Hazelgrove, come to think on't!'

'How old would you guess he was?'

'Me gran-dad's age, belike – he'm fifty-six or fifty-seven, I bliv.'

'Anything else? Did you see his face at all?' Milner asks.

'Oanly a bit,' Luke admits. He echoes Sally's description of the man's iron-grey curly hair, but can add little else.

'All right. Thank you very much – you've been quite helpful. Miss Stewart, will you please take Luke back to the others and bring that young lady -'

'Tes Nancy,' Luke explains.

'Thank you,' says Milner. 'And bring Nancy here, please.'

* * *

'Nicanor navigation here,' Andrew hears Goldston say into the radio. 'Quite a nice little breeze we've got today, sirs.'

'This is Amyntas – so I've noticed,' Andrew replies. 'Are we on course?'

'Not quite – about four degrees south of where we need to be.'

'Following you, then.'

'All right, that's better,' Andrew hears Chatto say after another few seconds.

'Ought to be bang on in twenty-one minutes at this speed,' Goldston announces.

* * *

Nancy Niles is fourteen – the oldest of the group, she is quick to tell them – and is from Howling. Milner suddenly finds himself overcome by a combination of curiosity, concern and irritation.

'If you'll forgive me for asking, what are you all _doing_ on this farm? I'm not saying that anyone's done anything wrong, but I thought that children under twelve weren't meant to be working during term time, even on farms.'

Nancy looks astonished at his ignorance.

'T' school in Howling's bin closed since 1940, and 'tes the same in Beershorn,' she points out.

'Well... yes, all right. Were they evacuated?'

'Ay. I dunna where. Wales, I reckon.'

'Why weren't all of you evacuated with them, then?'

'Not iverone's parents was willin' fer them to go.'

'No, I suppose not,' Milner reflects. He thinks again of the boys at Michael Richards' school. 'What about that little girl who put up her hand, though?'

'That's Agnes – she'm Luke's sister. She were a cowdling then.'

'Why isn't she at home?'

'Mass' Henshaw were a soldier and were killed – right afore t' 'vacuation, now I thinks about it – and Mistus Henshaw works days in a factory. And asides that, Mus' Jackson's payin' each on us tuppence a bushel!'

'What is it you're harvesting?'

'Today 'tes rhubarb and spring cauliflower – tomorrow, maybe turmuts or spinach.'

Milner nods, and reminds himself that this isn't why the police have been called here; they're wasting time.

'What did you see when Miss Hazelgrove was attacked, then?'

Nancy offers the interesting news that she saw the incident from behind, while returning from taking Agnes to visit the privy. That is all that she has time to say before an air-raid siren begins to wail.

••••••••••••••  
**Author's note:**  
Mechanised Transport Corps personnel were permitted to substitute brown corduroy trousers for the regulation skirt, but only if they were assigned to Civil Defence duties.


	4. Chapter 4

Nancy leaps to her feet.

'This way, quick!' she says, pointing to a field north of where the car stands. 'Mus' Jackson put in a fosse.'

Sure enough, all of the others are heading for a slit trench at the edge of the very same potato field that Sam had helped Joan and Rose to sow two years ago. It occurs to Sam as she runs that Milner, with his leg, and Joan, in her interesting condition, are going to have trouble getting into that trench.

Milner, in fact, is finding it hard going just to keep up with the others. Sam reaches the edge of the trench and leaps, once again wishing for trousers, then turns and waits for Milner to catch up. To her surprise Joan is already there, having solved her problem by going to the ditch's far end, where the floor slopes downwards from the field, and climbing carefully down.

Milner reaches the trench and stands above it, looking nonplussed. An idea occurs to Sam.

'Try sitting down on the edge, Milner.' When he complies, she asks, 'Can you jump that far?'

His feet dangle just below the top of Sam's head. He looks doubtful.

'Here, give me your hands,' says Sam urgently. Aeroplanes, both friend and foe, are becoming audible.

'Now, just push off from there,' she goes on. He does so, landing a bit unsteadily, but doing so on both feet, without falling.

'Thank you, Sam.'

'Not at all.' Out of the corner of her eye, Sam sees that Joan has been watching this with a mixture of disbelief and contempt.

The trench is just wide enough to allow two rows of people to sit facing one another. Milner makes his way towards one end, where someone has thoughtfully placed a small boulder to sit on. Sam finds herself sitting directly opposite Joan, who looks at Sam with suspicion.

'Why couldn't that copper get down 'ere by 'imself?' she demands, although it strikes Sam that she asks this more quietly than she might have done two years ago.

'Sergeant Milner lost a leg in the Norwegian campaign,' Sam explains, just as quietly.

Joan looks abashed and is silent.

'How _are_ you?' Sam asks.

'Oh, well – can't complain. Been some changes made, as you can see! This 'ere's our Lily,' Joan adds with a grin, introducing the tiny blond girl, who now sits on her lap, fidgeting.

'Hello, Lily.' She is a sweet-faced little girl, and looks oddly familiar – although not like Tom and most definitely not like Joan. The child regards Sam gravely for a moment, then begins making her way over several other people's laps to where Tom sits.

'That's about 'ow it goes,' Joan remarks with a wry grin. 'She knows a relation when she sees one, I figure.'

By now the unmistakable sounds of ack-ack fire and falling bombs can be heard, coming from the direction of Hastings. Luke stands up (to Tom's vocal alarm), looks towards the source of the noise and reports that smoke is beginning to rise.

'Where's Rose?' Sam asks. _That's it __– of course! Lily looks like Rose!_ 'Did she move to another farm?'

Joan's face darkens. She makes as though to reply, then glances at Nancy, who sits next to her but is preoccupied with two of the younger children.

'Drummed 'er out right out of the Land Army, they did, when she couldn't 'ide 'er difficulties no more,' Joan relates. 'Tom an' me, we sheltered 'er long enough for Lily to be born in the 'ouse 'ere. Then the Labour Ministry came callin' – sent 'er off to a works in Soli'ull. Don't know what'll 'appen when the war's over. That shocks you, does it?' she continues, with obvious relish.

'No – of course it doesn't,' Sam announces. _Well, all right, it would have done once,_ she adds silently. _But what did she mean about Lily knowing a relation when she sees one?_

'Lily's Tom's 'a'f-sister, if you're wonderin',' Joan adds. Before Sam can consider a reply to this Joan asks, 'Where's the old man?'

'If you mean Mr Foyle, he's retired,' says Sam. _Well, no – not actually __**retired**__,_ she reminds herself. But there is likely to be no point in trying to explain this to Joan, and in any event there are other things to think about just now. A dogfight is taking shape overhead.

Two Hurricanes have engaged a lone Focke-Wulf, which is quickly joined by a Messerschmidt. One of the aeroplanes, though it's impossible to tell which, is making a sputtering sound: it must be running out of fuel. Sure enough, one of the Hurricanes begins to retreat just as another fighter – it has American markings, Sam doesn't know the names of their aircraft – comes to join the fray.

The newcomer isn't quite fast enough to stop the Messerschmidt from having a go at the retreating Hurricane, which begins to trail smoke and heads towards the ground at much too steep an angle. The remaining Hurricane and the American engage the enemy 'planes.

Two Spitfires arrive.

The Allies gain, lose (the American goes spinning out of the sky), then regain the upper hand. The Focke-Wulf disappears in a fireball, after which the Messerschmidt retreats. Now one of the Spits is in distress and beats a retreat of its own.

The party in the trench watch all of this with steady but not unwavering attention, their silence broken by gasps, cheers, and snatches of conversation. It is only Sam whose scrutiny of the sky is completely unbroken, her face turned upwards, until she feels someone's eyes on her and lowers her head to see Nancy Niles gazing gravely at her.

'Is your boy up there, then?' Nancy asks in a solemn tone.

Sam, to her surprise, feels herself blushing.

'He might be,' Sam answers.

* * *

'That's the place,' Chatto declares grimly. They are only just inside the clouds now, low enough to see clearly what's beneath them. The Mosquito begins a rapid descent as Andrew flies the Spitfire in circles overhead. 'Want the north end,' Chatto's voice comes through the radio, sounding as though he's talking largely to himself. 'Target within sights – three, two... '

Andrew watches the Mossie drop its payload – first one bomb, then the other, almost but not quite simultaneously, as WingCo said – and realizes with a start that he's been holding his breath.

'That's it! Off we go!' Chatto exclaims. Both 'planes rise back into the clouds. The airmen sense, rather than see or hear, the bombs reaching their target.

'Amyntas to Nicanor – nicely done!' Andrew offers. _Odd thing to say about dropping bombs, though,_ he reflects.

'Many thanks, Amyntas, but we don't know yet.'

_Point taken,_ Andrew thinks; _someone will have to come and take a recce tomorrow, or even this afternoon._ He decides to volunteer for the task.

They climb back into the clouds and turn west, towards England, pulling into formation, the Spit slightly to the rear this time: any trouble on the return trip is likely to come from behind, and Andrew almost instinctively begins turning his head back and forth, watching for enemy aircraft.

* * *

After about three-quarters of an hour the all clear sounds. The group leaves the trench in a single line, climbing up the slope at the far end. Joan returns to the house with Lily and Agnes in tow; Tom and Nancy both stand about uncertainly.

'I'm afraid I didn't have time to finish interviewing Miss Niles,' Milner tells Tom. Nancy, hearing herself referred to in this way, stands a bit more upright. Luke says that they ought to get back to work and volunteers to supervise the other children, an offer Tom accepts a bit dubiously.

'So – both Miss Hazelgrove and the man who attacked her had their backs to you,' Milner reminds Nancy.

'Ay, that's so.'

'What did you see?'

'Un were duppin' along towards 'un. Not runnin' – I suppose 'un did'n' want to make any noise.'

'That's probably a good guess. What happened when he caught up with her?'

'Un wratched out 'un's arm an' took holt o' 'un, like this.' Nancy mimes reaching with her left arm to grab ahold of someone's left shoulder. 'And then dracly-minute, with 'un's other arm 'un polt 'un's shoulder and then tried to chock 'un, belike, this way.' She mimes these things in turn, aiming a fierce blow from her right fist and then using the same arm to encircle neck of the imaginary person before her.

'And what did Miss Hazelgrove do then?'

Nancy tells the same story that Luke and Sally herself had done, of Sally flipping the man to the ground, and of the man beating a hasty retreat afterwards. ''Twere only then I saw 'un's face at all,' she notes. She confirms the description that Sam and Milner have already heard – physically slight, dark-grey curly hair – and adds a detail of her own: 'All t' bits on 'un's face – 'un's eyes and nose and mouth – was real _small,_ like, and all on 'em together in t' middle.'

Milner has the sensation of something dropping into place, like a missing piece of a mechanism or a puzzle. He glances at Sam and sees her returning his gaze.

_**That's**__ why Miss Hazelgrove seemed familiar,_ she thinks.

'How old would you guess that this man was?' Milner asks.

'Pretty old, I reckon – near to sixty, belike.'

'How might he have got on to the property?'

'Un left by t' geat,' Nancy observes. 'Might of come in that way, tu. An' with t' hedgerow bein' as 'tes... '

She trails off. Milner nods. Hugh Jackson, he remembers, had let the place become run-down in spots. The hedgerow along Godmere Road is one of them. Tom seems to have been making an effort to fix things up, from what Milner can see, but the shortages of one thing and another undoubtedly mean that repairing or replanting are out of the question.

* * *

A few minutes more and they're over the Channel, the Mosquito slightly above the clouds, Andrew a thousand feet higher, as before. The wind is still sharp at this altitude but has shifted, coming now from due east – less liable to drive them off course, and it gives them a bit of extra speed.

Perhaps that's how they've got past Jerry's radar and ack-acks so easily. _Too good to be true, really,_ Andrew thinks. They're not being pursued, that much seems clear, although Andrew doesn't leave off looking behind him.

A dot appears on the horizon to the north, and then another. Within a second they've both taken the form of aeroplanes. They're at least twelve miles away, still just over England, Andrew reckons.

'This is Amyntas – unknown aircraft at two o'clock,' he announces.

'Nicanor here – we can see them as well,' Chatto's voice comes back.

All three men fall silent, watching as the machines become clearly identifiable: Messerschmitts. They're both heading towards France as quickly as they can, just above the clouds. Abruptly one of them flips up and back, its nose to the sky, then tumbles, leading with its starboard wing as it vanishes into the clouds below.

_Ack-acks,_ Andrew thinks. And then: _We're going home to a raid, or the aftermath of one._

The remaining Messerschmitt is on the verge of passing by the British 'planes when it turns to starboard and heads straight for them. Chatto brings the Mosquito upwards to 30,000 feet – nearly as high as it will go. Andrew follows suit, turning towards the Messerschmitt as he does so. For a second or two the German pilot simply keeps on; then, ignoring Andrew, he abruptly ascends, turning towards the Mosquito.

Andrew turns the Spit hard; it takes him only an instant to bring the Messerschmitt within his gunsight, although the force of the turn makes everything go grey for a few seconds. He presses his gun button but his shots go wide.

_Too early and too far away – wait 'til you can see the whites of his eyes,_ he reminds himself. He's got Jerry's attention, though; the chap leaves off chasing the Mosquito and turns his 'plane towards the Spit.

Tracer bullets go whizzing under Andrew's 'plane, then over it. He feels it shiver ever so slightly but _We're not finished yet,_ he thinks. He turns the Spitfire hard to port – it still responds to his commands, surely whatever hit the 'plane can't have done much damage – so that he's flying in a circle with the Messerschmitt. He may not be able to see the fellow's eyes – _How in blazes are we meant to see the whites of anyone's eyes from behind, _it occurs to him to wonder,_ and through flying goggles at that?_ – but he can clearly make him out turning his head from side to side.

The Messerschmitt abruptly turns out of the circle and is suddenly at a right angle with the Spit, once again facing the Mossie. Andrew presses the gun button once, twice. He sees the Messerschmitt's port windscreen shatter and watches the pilot rear up in alarm. Suddenly it spins downwards, nose first, towards the drink. The cloud cover has broken up just enough for Andrew to see that the pilot doesn't evacuate.

Then, with a start, he notices that he's over England: the familiar curve of Pevensey Bay stretches beneath him. Coming out of the turn, he begins to look about for the Mossie, but before he can spot it his radio crackles to life.

'This is Nicanor calling Amyntas – you're -' Chatto begins, but Andrew cuts him off, rank and regulations be damned.

'Are you all right?' he demands.

'What? Yes, we're perfectly fine here, but the _point_ is, you're _not!_ You've started to trail smoke – not in any great way, I'll admit, but it can only get worse – and I can see as plain as a pikestaff that your fuel tank is leaking. You need to hit the silk, Andrew, post haste!'

Andrew glances at his fuel gages. Indeed, the main tank is empty and the auxiliary is barely a quarter full.

'I can land in the Pevensey Levels,' he begins. 'Won't do any damage there.'

'I _said,_ you need to evacuate! Get down to ten thousand feet and _do it!_ Never mind your bloody machine! That's an order, Foyle! Can you hear me?' Chatto adds when Andrew doesn't reply at once.

'Yes, sir,' Andrew answers. There's nothing else to say. He can smell the smoke now.

He's at sixteen thousand feet and half a mile inland, with a built-up area beneath him. _If the Spit's going to prang, better to let it go into a field._

He turns the aeroplane to starboard, puts it into a gentle dive, and begins thinking about what he needs to do next.

The last time he deployed a parachute was in 1940, and that had been as part of a training exercise.

Fourteen thousand feet.

Hurriedly he reviews the steps: _lower the seat to the lowest setting, pull the red tab at the canopy 12 o'clock position, open the cockpit side door, __eject the canopy with both elbows – No, that isn't right! _First_ eject the canopy and _then_ open the door! – unfasten the safety belt and step over the side._

Twelve thousand feet.

_The static line will pull the D ring on the __'__chute and it'll open as you fall away from the aircraft,_ he reminds himself.

Eleven thousand feet.

_If that doesn't work, simply pull the D ring and deploy the parachute yourself. _

Ninety-five hundred feet.

_Right._ _You know how to do this. You've done it before. _

There's a knot in the pit of his stomach.

_Now._

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's notes:**  
The air raid that is depicted, along with its aftermath, in this and the following chapters is – for lack of a better way of putting it – inspired by a raid on Hastings that occurred on May 23rd, 1943, with Hastings Old Town suffering the worst damage. It was the second-worst raid on Hastings: Goodman's _Hastings at War_ indicates 25 dead (many of them eating or serving lunch at the Swan Inn, which was destroyed along with several other Swan Terrace buildings) and 85 injured, 30 of them seriously. However, the other details given here are my own invention, and I have taken three major pieces of artistic license. First, the raid actually occurred on a Sunday, when Sam and Milner would not normally be at work; I have pushed it forward to the previous Thursday. Second, two other cities on England's southern coast were raided at the same time, a fact that I've chosen to ignore (primarily because I've been unable to identify them). Finally, according to Goodman it was not until three months after this incident that Hastings got its own air-raid sirens, operating independently of the national system. But we do hear sirens wailing at appropriate moments in _Foyle's War_ episodes set as early as 1940, and I'm sticking with canon rather than history on this point.

"The force of the turn makes everything go grey for a few seconds": This is the first symptom of hypoxia, in which one region of the body is deprived of blood; in the case of aviators, acceleration force (g) causes pooling of blood in the lower regions of the body and the brain doesn't get enough. Grey may be followed by red, which is followed in turn by blackout and loss of consciousness. The anti-g suit, more often known simply as the g-suit, was developed during World War II to counteract this problem, but doesn't seem to have been widely available before 1944. Fortunately Andrew is only mildly affected by the problem in this instance.

The procedure for evacuating a Spitfire in flight comes from the website of the aviation school at Utah Valley University.


	5. Chapter 5

Sussex is spread beneath him.

After a few moments Andrew can see a faint column of black smoke beginning to rise from a point to the west. _The Spit must have crashed there,_ he thinks with a pang. He looks northeast along the coastline and sees a disquieting haze rising beyond the horizon. _If there was a raid, it must have been on Hastings._

_Land first, then worry,_ he decides.

_Legs slightly bent at the knee. Chin tucked under. Hands linked behind the neck. Elbows tucked in. Make contact with the ground, balls of the feet first, allow the body to buckle, then move downwards into a horizontal position – calf, thigh, buttock, latissimus dorsi, in that order – direction determined by the prevailing wind. _

_Which is from the east, I suppose._ He can no longer see the Channel._ I must be more than a mile inland now. _

_Oh, bloody hell, what's this?!_

Looking down, he realises that he's heading directly for a copse of – from the looks of it – rather large trees. He kicks his legs out in front of him, hoping that this will move him towards open ground, but it's clear at once that this won't be enough.

* * *

As she drives back to Hastings Sam is silent at first, while Milner writes in his notebook. When she hears his pen stop scratching she ventures an observation.

'All three of them described a man who sounds awfully like that fellow in Plynlimmon Road who disappeared in November after his house was burgled,' she points out.

'Walter Saxby,' Milner agrees. 'The same thing occurred to me. Why would he attack a Land Girl, though?'

Sam keeps her eyes on the road but grins from ear to ear.

'Because he mistook her for Miss Josephine Bow – or whatever her name really is,' she offers. 'It would be _quite_ possible to do that if you saw her only from behind. You never saw Miss Bow at all, did you, Milner?'

'No, not in person,' Milner admits. 'Only in those photographs your friend took.'

'Miss Hazelgrove doesn't have – my goodness, what on Earth's _this?'_

The Home Guard have hastily erected a checkpoint in Godmere Road at the Howling junction; no such thing was here earlier in the day. Sam stops the car, and she and Milner both pull their identification cards out of their pockets, although the car is clearly marked _POLICE_ above the windscreen_._ A solidly-built Home Guard of about fifty comes over to Sam's window, looking apologetic.

'Sorry, miss, ye can't go this way,' he announces. 'Where ye bound?'

'Hastings,' says Sam. 'Why- ?'

'Ye can turn right an' go through Howling, an' then Beershorn, an' 'twill take ye oanly a bit longer. 'Tisn't so far out-de-way.'

'Thank you. _Why_ can't we go through, though?'

'Salvage opyration,' the Home Guard explains. 'An aeryplane's crashed in the field.'

'What sort of a 'plane?' Sam asks.

'Sam,' Milner interjects quietly. _Don't borrow trouble,_ he wants to add, though he knows quite well it would be pointless to do so.

'One o' ourn,' the Home Guard tells her solemnly. 'One o' they Spitfires.'

There is a brief, horrible silence.

'Sam,' Milner says again, more loudly this time. Sam ignores him.

'What's become of... Where is the pilot now?' she asks.

'That's a good 'un – 'tes hard to say,' the Home Guard replies thoughtfully. 'Un mun have parychuted out. T' aeryplane was empty when't crashed.'

'Thank you,' says Sam. 'Turn right and go through Howling, I think you said?'

* * *

Andrew had left his flying gantlets in the cockpit, thinking it would be easier to deploy the 'chute manually if he needed to, and to control it, with bare hands. His hands are wind-burned as a result, but what's worse is that when he'd reached out his left arm, thinking to move the branches aside as he fell between them, there was nothing to protect his hand from being scraped and cut by those branches, and now the hand's bleeding.

Worse is that immediately after that the left side of his rib cage had collided sharply with a particularly sturdy branch; and as the 'chute's suspension lines got caught on yet another branch he'd seemed to bounce in the air, with his whole left side taking the brunt of it, and now it hurts to move his left arm or try to look to that side, or indeed to breathe too deeply.

Worst of all, however, is simply that he's suspended here, hanging a bit lopsided in mid-air like a puppet, his right foot slightly lower than his left – about four and a half feet away from the ground, he judges.

His flying suit – torn in two places that he can see – which had kept him comfortably warm at 25,000 feet, now feels too hot. With his right hand he removes his goggles and helmet, letting each one drop to the ground. Then he begins to undo the zipper on the suit's front, only to find it becoming snagged half-way down his torso.

_Blast! Still, that helps a bit._ He takes a look at his surroundings.

To his right a broad, paved drive stretches away for a good mile – the terrain is so level that he can see the distance easily – before it vanishes into a tree tunnel. Some of the land directly in front of him has been parceled out into allotments. Several hundred feet beyond that, on the other side of a low fence, stands a large stone house.

He takes as deep a breath as his aching left side will allow.

'Hello-o-o?' he calls out. _'Hello!'_

Two or three minutes pass by with no response. Looking more closely, Andrew sees that the house is derelict. Several of its windows are broken and there's a bomb crater to the left side, not a new one to judge by the quantity of plants growing in it. The fence has seen better days as well. Clearly the property's been abandoned. There's absolutely no one about.

_I'll die of exposure,_ he thinks, but quickly scolds himself. _Don't be an ass.__ Get hold of yourself. Someone will be along to work one of those allotments. And Robert will have reported the incident to WingCo. There's probably a search party looking for me even now. It's only a question of how long it will take._

He can still see a haze of smoke beyond the horizon, behind the house, in the direction of Hastings.

_Dad,_ he starts to think.

* * *

Sam remains silent as they pass through Howling.

'What were you saying about Miss Hazelgrove, Sam?' Milner prompts.

'Miss Hazelgrove?'

'And Miss Bow.'

'Oh, yes, of course! Well, Miss Hazelgrove doesn't really have the same sort of _face_ as Miss Bow, and her eyes are a different colour, but she does have _quite_ the same sort of hair, which was done in more or less the same way, and she's roughly the same height, and she's terribly _slim,_ as Miss Bow is,' Sam explains.

'So from a distance... ' Milner begins.

'Exactly! If Mr Saxby were passing by Jackson's Farm for some reason and happened to catch sight of her – but from a hundred or so feet away, and not head-on – he might have thought that she _was_ Miss Bow and decided to take action – because she stole his passport and driving license!'

'We don't actually _know_ any of this, Sam. We don't know that the assailant was Mr Saxby, and for that matter we still don't know that it was Miss Bow who took his documents. All we actually know is that Miss Bow was observed leaving Mr Saxby's house at _some_ point last year and that neither one of them has been seen since the middle of November.'

'Well... that's true.'

'And then there's the question of what Mr Saxby would be doing in this, um, remote corner of rural Sussex.' Milner's choice of word – _remote_ rather than _godforsaken_ – doesn't change his tone of voice.

By now they are about to leave Beershorn. Sam drives them past a decrepit nonconformist chapel.

'Surely it isn't _that_ bad here,' she offers, smiling for the first time since they came upon the checkpoint. Then, 'Oh!' she exclaims, just as Milner says, 'Look out!'

A gate in the middle of the roadside hedgerow has opened, and a man well into his dotage, carrying a shotgun, has hurtled out into the road, directly into the Wolseley's path. Sam abruptly applies the brake and sounds the car's horn.

The first man is closely followed by a second, somewhat younger one; Sam supposes that he must be about the same age as her father. He has a pair of bird-watching glasses in one hand and an expression on his face that suggests equal parts alarm and fury.

'Hey, what's the idea?' Sam shouts out of the window. 'I might have run you down!'

'T' invasion!' the older man proclaims breathlessly. 'Tes come at last!'

'Doan't be daft, ye doithering old fool!' the younger man tells him. He starts to turn towards the car but then stops, his attention apparently riveted first by its police markings and then by Milner, who is in the road himself now, identification card in hand.

'My name's Milner,' he announces. 'Hastings Police. What seems to be the problem?'

Sam gets out of the car, but remains close by it and leaves the door open, on the chance that should they need to leave in a hurry.

'We saw _one_ parychutist,' the younger man insists. _'Oanly_ one. 'Twere noways sure to be one o' theirn!'

'That's quite true,' Milner agrees, eyeing the shotgun. 'We saw a British aeroplane and an American one shot down during the raid – either of those might account for what you saw. And if the parachutist _is_ German, he could be a source of useful information if he were captured alive. Where did you see him coming down?'

With his free hand, the older man gestures extravagantly towards the east-northeast.

'Mayhap two or three miles yanger,' he says.

'When was this?'

'Oh – 'twere five or six minutes agoo now.'

'Really? The all clear was more than half an hour ago,' Milner points out.

'Ay, 'tes the truth,' the younger man interjects. ''Twere _after_ the raiders passed.'

Milner considers this for a moment.

'Perhaps we ought to find out what's become of him,' he suggests. 'We can take you in that direction' – he motions towards the car – _'if_ we can agree that the firearm will be used only as the last possible resort.'

The older man stares at Milner.

''Tesin't _loaded!'_ he exclaims. 'Tes oanly to fritten the Hunnish divil into handin' over 'un's pistol.'

'All right. Sam, can you get us a mile or so north-northeast of here, as the crow flies?'

'You bet! As close as I possibly can,' Sam promises. She ushers the two men into the back seat and the party are on their way – _carrying no functional weapons,_ it now occurs to Milner, _while in search of a parachutist who may possibly be German and is in all likelihood armed._

Almost as an afterthought the younger of the men introduces himself, Justin Shaw, and his half-brother, Bede Hurst.

'My name's Samantha Stewart – you can call me Sam,' she tells them.

She drives slowly along the road, which leads more northeast than east-northeast. The four of them are all but silent, watching for anything irregular. There is nothing to be seen, but that's partly because hedges and a few trees have been planted along the edges of the fields they're travelling past. They are thick enough to prevent a wide view, but not very high; here and there the tops of taller trees come into view.

* * *

The gentle breeze off of the Channel has been just enough to keep the parachute's canopy distended even as it rests on the ground. Now a sudden brisk gust raises it several feet into the air – but not high enough, nor for long enough, to let the suspension lines slide Andrew further towards the ground.

* * *

'Look there!' Milner exclaims suddenly. In the distance, ahead of them and to their right, something large, white and round rises briefly over the tops of the trees, then sinks out of view.

'That must be a parachute!' Sam replies excitedly. 'But how are we going to get to it?'

They haven't seen a turning since leaving Beershorn, and by the time they do come to one the copse is well behind them. Still, it does turn off in something like the right direction, so Sam takes it. It's a bridle path, not a proper road, and it's likewise lined with trees – tall ancient oaks this time – but it curves back towards the direction from which they came. Then it straightens, and after lurching forward for a few more seconds they can see the end of the allée.

* * *

_There's no point worrying about Dad,_ Andrew tells himself. _Not here or now._

_And the best of luck with __**that**__, Foyle._

He starts to think instead about the op and whether they – _whether __**I**__, more to the point_ – could have done anything differently. _No, done anything better._

It had all been by the book. The German pilot had obviously seen them and taken the opportunity to do some additional damage to his enemy. Andrew's job as escort had been to protect the unarmed Mossie, and that was precisely what he'd done, by way of distraction.

_Odd that the pilot didn't evacuate, _he thinks.

Then he remembers the shattered windsceen. Quite suddenly it occurs to him the fellow may no longer have been able to do so.

_I killed him. I shot him dead._

_\- Did you ever kill anyone?  
\- What, are you worried about maybe having to?  
\- I suppose I have begun to think about it. Well, did you?  
\- Yes. Yeah, I did. And all I can say is, you get through it._

_And I've done it. I've killed someone._

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's note:**  
The instructions for a parachute landing come from _Static Line Parachuting Techniques and Training_ (Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2018; document TC 3-21.220); they may well be anachronistic, given the date of that publication, but they were all that I could find.


	6. Chapter 6

They've left the Downs now and are on the Weald. Ahead of them the alleé ends and becomes a broad drive through flat open fields, at the end of which – rather more than a mile from where they are now, Sam guesses – they can just see a copse of beeches. Sure enough, the lines of a parachute are caught in the trees, pulled towards the earth by what is almost certainly someone wearing a coverall, suspended not too far above the ground.

Mr Shaw gazes through his binoculars.

'Ay, there 'un be!' he exclaims.

'Might I have a look, please?' Milner asks.

'Help yerself.'

Milner looks through the binoculars, adjusts the focus and looks again. He begins to consider what to do next – _or rather more to the point,_ he thinks, _what to **say** next._

'I think we've found our man,' he begins carefully. 'And – Mr Shaw, Mr Hurst, your eagerness to assist in the country's defence is very commendable – but this fellow's definitely British.'

'How can ye be safe o' that?!' Mr Hurst demands. 'In nineteen hundred and forty-one there were talk o' Huns landing in British uniforms they'd taken from prisoners.'

'Yes, I remember that,' Milner replies. 'But there were no _confirmed_ reports, as I recall. The reason I can be sure, though,' he goes on, 'is that he's... an acquaintance.'

The car is now only a few hundred yards away from the end of the tree tunnel. Sam applies the brake – a bit harder, perhaps, than her passengers would like – and turns to look at Milner.

* * *

There is a faint stirring from the direction of the tree tunnel – the sound, perhaps, of a motor-car – and then silence.

'Hello!' Andrew calls out again, but the breeze carries his voice in the opposite direction.

* * *

'May I see?' Sam asks in a rather tight voice, holding out her hand for the binoculars. Milner hands them to her without a word.

'Ye'll be careful wi' those, now, maidy!' Mr Shaw exclaims. Sam makes no reply to this. The men watch as she looks through the field-glasses for a few seconds.

'Thank you,' she says, quite calmly, as she hands them back to Mr Shaw. Then she puts the car into gear, sets its bell to ringing, and presses the accelerator _about as far as it'll go,_ Milner observes silently.

* * *

The sound of the motor begins again, unmistakable now, growing louder and joined by that of a bell, the sort used on ambulances and... _well, on police cars,_ Andrew thinks.

And it is indeed a police car that emerges from the tree tunnel, bell ringing, travelling at top speed. From this angle Andrew can't see the occupants. The driver brings the car to a hard stop at the end of the drive, fifteen feet or so away from the foot of the tree.

The two rear doors open simultaneously and a man in rough clothes emerges from each one. Both, Andrew guesses, are older than Dad; one, in fact, looks very old indeed and carries a shotgun, which he promptly raises to his shoulder and points at Andrew.

The front passenger door opens and Dad's sergeant – _um, formerly Dad's sergeant_ – gets out.

'Don't worry, Andrew, Mr Hurst has assured us that his weapon isn't loaded,' says Milner.

'Maybe 'tesn't and maybe 'tes,' Mr Hurst interjects.

'Gentlemen, this is Flight Lieutenant Andrew Foyle,' Milner tells the two men, looking pointedly at the older one. 'These are Mr Hurst and Mr Shaw, Andrew. They saw your descent, and we were passing by just as they set out on foot to, um, search for you.'

As Andrew is trying to take this in, Sam emerges from the driver's side and strides across the grass, first-aid box in hand, until she stands at his feet.

'Hello, Sam – wonderful to see you,' he says in the most offhand manner he can summon up.

'Oh, darling, are you hurt?' she asks, looking up at him. Mr Hurst, apparently mollified, lowers his firearm. Andrew lifts his left hand and shrugs his shoulders, although doing this makes him wince.

'My left side aches a bit – I must have pulled a muscle or two.'

'We need to get you to hospital,' Sam announces.

'No, no,' Andrew starts to protest. 'I'll be perfectly all right once I'm back on the ground.'

'That's true, we've got to get you down from there first,' Sam goes on, ignoring Andrew's protest. 'Do you suppose that they're on the telephone in that house? We could call for an ambulance. Or they might have a ladder. No, I suppose not,' she goes on. 'It looks quite abandoned, really.'

'Ay, and good riddance, tu – 'tes the Deckersey place,' Mr Shaw interjects, and spits in the direction of the house.

'The de Courcys?' Milner queries. He knows the name. 'Did they evacuate?'

'Hah! That's a good 'un, _that_ is! Blast them and theirn for a lot o' puffed-up, speerin' fifth columnists! They were carted off by your lot,' Mr Shaw explains. 'Soor, 'tweren't so long ago – the beginnin' of nineteen hundred and forty. D'ye not recall?'

'That would have been Special Branch, not the Hastings Police, and in any case I was in the Army then,' Milner tells him.

'We're wasting time!' Sam exclaims. 'Does anyone have a knife? I can climb up and cut Andrew free, and you can catch him as he descends.'

'Nay, Miss, and yer wearin' the King's own garments!' declares Mr Hurst. ''Twill niver do to grubby them so!'

Milner looks carefully at the oak. The lowest branch is less than three feet off the ground. _I ought to be able to get up onto that without much trouble,_ he tells himself. It's quite broad and looks sturdy. It projects at an angle to the side of the tree from which Andrew dangles – _what is that, perhaps sixty degrees?_ He thinks once more of Michael Richards' school and smiles wryly. But he's tall enough that if he can lean forward bit and brace himself against the next branch up...

'I'll have to drive back to Beershorn and find help, then,' Sam announces, moving towards the car.

'No, Sam. I'll do it. I still have my Army knife,' says Milner. He removes his topcoat, hat and suit jacket in succession. 'Would you please hold these things for me, Mr Shaw?'

'Milner, are you _quite_ sure... ?' Sam begins.

'_Yes._ I climbed trees all the time when I was young. It can't be all _that_ different with a Desoutter,' Milner insists, drawing a cluck of surprise from Mr Hurst.

'Very well – I'll stay here and... try to be helpful, I suppose,' says Sam.

'Andrew, when your feet are on the ground, let us know, will you please?'

'Um, of course, whatever you like,' Andrew assures him. The day's events are becoming more and more bewildering. 'Thank you for this.'

'Don't mention it.'

In the old days Milner would have led with his left leg, but that seems risky now. Instead, he holds onto the tree trunk and raises his right leg as high as he can, so that his foot is planted firmly onto the branch. Then, grasping the trunk even more firmly and with both hands, he hoists himself up onto the branch and settles his left foot next to his right.

It occurs to him as he does this that it has been three full years since the amputation, and that only a year ago he wouldn't have thought of himself, even casually, as having a left foot. He had a right foot; the other one was the Desoutter's foot.

He slowly leans forward until he can grasp the next branch above him, first with his right hand and then with both hands. Then he carefully moves outward along the branch's length. When the rigging lines, or a few of them at least, are within his reach he fishes his army knife out of his trouser pocket.

For a moment he is anxious, as he tries to remember how to deploy the blade safely with one hand. Accomplishing this, and reminding himself to look out rather than down, he leans forward a bit towards the rigging lines and begins sawing at the one closest to him.

It must be an important one. As the last threads fray and break Andrew plummets a good two feet towards the ground, flailing a bit as he goes. Sam reaches both arms up as though to catch him; he grasps her left hand with his uninjured right one and holds it tightly.

'One more and I think that we ought to be all right, if it's the right one,' she calls to Milner.

'There's only one more line I can reach from where I am now,' Milner answers. 'So I hope this is it.'

And it is, or nearly so. In a moment Andrew is less than a foot away from the ground. Letting go of Sam's hand, he finds the release box on the front of his harness, undoes it and, a bit awkwardly and wincing at the pain in his side, shrugs off the trappings as he descends into Sam's waiting arms.

He smiles at her and kisses her cheek.

'It really is awfully good to see you, Sam,' he says, very quietly.

His smile doesn't quite reach his eyes, Sam sees, and he looks drained, but 'Yes,' is all she says in reply as she returns his kiss.

•

'Don't put your hand on the ground, or on your knee, either,' Sam warns Andrew gently as she sprinkles tincture of iodine into a piece of cotton wool. They are sitting together under the tree. 'Just hold it up – like that, jolly good.'

'Be warned, Andrew – she can be a bit aggressive with that stuff,' Milner adds as he collects his belongings from Mr Shaw. He has made a return journey along the branch, then got down from it by dint of sitting on it.

'All right – thanks!' Andrew takes a deep breath and holds it, then exhales slowly, through his teeth, as Sam daubs the bloodied parts of his hand.

Mr Hurst has laid his firearm on the ground and now walks towards the parachute – its lines still tangled in the tree – removing a small field knife from his belt as he goes.

''T'woan't do to leave this here – t' Royal Air Force will shurlie want ut back,' he remarks. He begins methodically cutting the rigging lines, leaving just a bit of each one attached to the fabric; then he does the same with the harness. He laboriously folds the canopy into a bundle which he deposits into the Wolsely's boot, along with the harness, helmet and goggles.

'Sam?' Andrew asks quietly after a few moments.

'Hm?'

'I'm going to sound awfully stupid asking this, but... was there a raid on Hastings today?'

Surprised, Sam looks up from bandaging his hand.

'But weren't you... ?' she begins.

'No. I, um, I'm not allowed to say why I was flying, but if there was a scramble I wasn't part of it,' he explains. 'On the way back, though, we could see smoke rising over Hastings, and Messerschmitts on their way back to, well, wherever it was that they came from, and one of them decided to take us on.'

'Golly! Yes, there _was_ a raid. Milner and I were in the Downs on police business,' says Sam. 'The all clear was about an hour and a half ago. And you're right, Andrew, I'm afraid – from where we were, at least, it looked as though Hastings _was_ the target. I suppose that all we can do for the moment is to hope for the best,' she adds quietly, and is relieved when he meets her gaze and nods his head in acquiescence, if perhaps not agreement.

She tells him about the dogfight above the trench and the news of the pilotless crashed Spitfire.

'That was mine, most likely,' he speculates glumly.

'Whether it was or wasn't, the important thing is that you're safe,' Sam replies. 'They can replace an aeroplane. They can't replace you.' _He's exhausted,_ she thinks when he looks as though he isn't sure whether he ought to agree with this. 'Now let's get you to St Mary's.'

'I don't need that, Sam – I'm perfectly fine. I've got to report back to the base.' But the process of getting to his feet, even with Sam's help, causes him even more pain than sitting down had.

'You probably ought to have an x-ray, Andrew,' Milner suggests. Andrew opens his mouth to protest, but Sam speaks before he can get any words out.

'You weren't _alone_ in the air, _were_ you?' she asks.

'No – no, I wasn't. Um, there was another 'plane on the op.'

'Did your comrade-at-arms... return safely?'

'Yes – don't know of a reason why not, at least.' _Both of them. One __'plane, two personnel. No, no – don't tell anyone anything about the op._

'Then I'm _quite_ sure they'll have told the Wing Commander what happened, and the hospital can telephone the base to say that you're there,' Sam points out. 'Just to look you over and be _certain_ that you're alright, Andrew.'

His whole left side aches.

'Yes – yes, all right,' Andrew agrees.

* * *

A Wolseley 10/40 really isn't meant to accommodate five people, certainly not five adults, one of whom is rather tall and two of whom have added some bulk over the years. It is decided that Andrew, being injured, will sit in the front with Sam. He is relieved by this, not only for the simple pleasure of sitting beside her and watching her on the job. Sitting at close quarters with complete strangers, armed or not, is _not_ something he's eager to do at the moment.

_I killed someone. _

It might be possible to explain his unease to Milner – _who's been through much worse than you have,_ he reminds himself – or to Sam, who by now has heard, and even seen, more than enough of a pilot's troubles to understand. But not to people he's only just met, people who, if experience is anything to go by, will want to tell him how proud they are of him and how bloody marvelous he is. _Bloody, yes, that's it exactly,_ he thinks.

_I killed someone. In an instant, just like that, as though it were nothing at all._ He is suddenly terribly weary – _that's the word, weary, not tired_ – and closes his eyes. Sam puts her hand over his and waits for the rest of the party to settle in.

Milner is left to fold himself none too happily into the back alongside Mr Shaw and Mr Hurst, whom Sam asks to keep his shotgun lowered across his lap.

'People will think that we're transporting a prisoner otherwise,' she explains.

She presses the starter button and begins retracing the route they'd followed to get here. A short time after leaving the bridle path they come to a right-of-way protected by a gate. Mr Hurst tells Sam to stop the car.

'We can aye get along from here on foot,' he announces. Mr Shaw looks disgruntled, but resigned as well, and he says nothing in protest. 'Ye'll come to the next turning on yer left, that'll take ye just a bit wide of Hastings,' Mr Hurst goes on.

'Gentlemen – thank you for your help,' Andrew rouses himself to call out of the passenger's window.

'Yes,' Sam echoes, 'thank you very much indeed. Do take care,' she adds.

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's note:**  
André Marcel Desoutter (1894-1952) was a British aviator who lost a leg in a flying accident in 1913. His brother Charles sought a substitute for the standard heavy wooden artificial limb of the period and came up with the idea of making a prosthetic of duralumin, an aluminum (aluminium) alloy. He then went into business manufacturing these, and it seems to have become common practice to refer to any artificial limb as a Desoutter.


	7. Chapter 7

Andrew had been ready – all three of them had been ready – to encounter any amount of havoc on the way to St Mary's, but wherever it was that the raiders had struck, it clearly wasn't on this side of Hastings. Only as they approach the hospital does Sam begin ringing the Wolseley's bell, although the sound is lost amongst that of several ambulances in full cry. She sounds the police car's horn a few times for good measure.

It is inside the hospital that they find something more like chaos. A score or more of injured people lie on gurneys in the casualty department as hospital staff move about. There is a constant low-pitched din of urgent conversation, punctuated at intervals by the sound of equipment being moved across the floor. Ten nurses are hard at work in the room, every last one with her back turned to the new arrivals; no one takes any notice of an airman in slightly tattered flying gear, with a bandaged hand and shadows beneath his eyes, supported by a girl in M.T.C. service dress and a man in civilian clothing.

'We've an injured Spitfire pilot here!' Sam proclaims.

'Wait, Sam, let me,' says Sergeant Milner. He has homed in, Andrew observes, on one of the busy nurses, none of whom has turned even slightly in their direction. 'Edie,' he begins to call, then stops short and begins again, more loudly this time. 'Nurse Ashford!'

One of the nurses looks over her shoulder, blinks in surprise – perhaps at seeing not one but _three_ people whom she knows – scans the room, then motions in the direction of, miraculously, an empty chair.

'Wait there,' she instructs them. She returns to her patient and completes her task, then walks briskly over to the new arrivals and listens as Andrew explains his aborted parachute landing, how he'd fallen through the branches and been suspended in mid-air.

'Who bandaged your hand?'

'Sam did, actually. Disinfected it, as well.'

'This is excellent work,' Nurse Ashford tells Sam.

'Thank you,' Sam replies, adding, 'Basic training in the M.T.C.'

'But I'm afraid we'll have to undo it. The doctor will need to look directly at the wounds.' Nurse Ashford turns back to Andrew. 'Did your head strike anything as you fell?'

'No, I don't believe so. I'm sure of that, in fact.'

'Are you in pain anywhere else?'

'Well... my left side aches rather. When I came to a stand-still I, um, bounced, if that's the right way of putting it, and my left side got the worst of it. I must have pulled some muscles.'

'Is there any particular spot that hurts?'

'No, not really, just up and down the left side of my torso – shoulder to hip, I suppose. It's just a dull ache, really.'

Nurse Ashford motions for Milner and Sam to move out of her way, which they obediently do. She crouches next to Andrew on his left side.

'I'm going to press on your ribs, one by one, as gently as I can,' she tells him. 'If anything hurts more than it already does, please say so, won't you?'

'Will do,' Andrew agrees. A few moments later, 'Ouch!' he exclaims. 'Alright, that _does_ hurt.'

'I'll ask the doctor to order an x-ray,' Nurse Ashford announces, rising to her feet, 'after I take your temperature and your blood pressure.'

Andrew glances at Sam, who looks at him with something that stops just short of an I-told-you-so expression. She shifts her gaze to Nurse Ashford.

'Is there anything that _we_ can do?' she asks.

'Not at present, no,' Edith says matter-of-factly. 'I'll make sure that R.A.F. Hastings knows that you're here,' she tells Andrew, adding after a tiny hesitation, 'Your father, as well.'

'But he'll be all right – Andrew, I mean,' Sam presses on.

'Oh, yes, Sam, I really think so. A broken rib or two is the worst thing we'd be looking for.'

Sam nods.

'Sam – we ought to go back to the station,' says Milner.

'Yes,' Sam replies, without moving an inch. 'Yes, of course.'

'He's probably right,' Andrew says. He touches her hand with his unbandaged one. 'I'll be perfectly fine here, you know. Thank you,' he adds, 'for bringing me here.'

Sam gazes at him for a moment. He still looks frayed about the edges, but his face is slightly less drawn now than it was when they were sitting on the ground in the open country.

'I'll come back as soon as I'm able,' she says.

He looks back at her.

'Thank you for _that,_ as well.'

* * *

'I'll put Mr Meredith in the picture about Miss Bow and Mr Saxby,' Milner says. 'I don't think he's familiar with those cases. And while I do that you can use my office to telephone Mr Foyle.'

Sam glances at him, and away from the road, for just an instant. As they draw near Bohemia Road the effects of the raid still don't seem too terrible – certainly not bad enough to cause the crowd of casualties that they'd seen at St Mary's.

'Edith said that the hospital would do that, and won't you need me to tell Mr Meredith about Miss Bow?'

Milner answers only after hesitating.

'To be honest with you, when I asked him if it would be all right to take _you_ along on this case – in place of a constable, I mean – well, I had to explain to him who you are. That wasn't the first time, either,' he goes on, shaking his head. 'But in any case, I suspect that Mr Foyle would want to know that you were the one who rescued Andrew and delivered him to hospital.'

'_We_ did that,' Sam points out.

'Well, true enough – but I'm not sure that's the important part.'

* * *

'Where in _blazes_ 'ave you two _been?'_ Brookie explodes when Milner and Sam arrive in the station house. 'You both alright?'

'We're fine,' Milner tells him. 'We waited out the raid in a slit trench and afterwards... well, we ended up taking quite a diversion.' He briefly explains the events of the past few hours. 'Everything alright _here?'_

'Yeah, it didn't touch us. Most of the boys are out now, dealing with the usual stuff after a raid.' Brooke frowns. 'Gettin' to the point that I'm surprised I 'aven't 'eard from anybody, though. Might be worse than it seemed from 'ere.'

'Mm. Is Mr Meredith busy? I think I ought to fill him in about this case.'

'Well, 'e's not busy solving any crimes, that much's certain.'

Milner clicks his tongue, a sound Sam hasn't heard from him before now, as she lets herself into his office.

She's sufficiently rattled, as she now realises, that she has to take a second or two to remember Mr Foyle's telephone number. She lifts the receiver, dials and waits.

She hears silence, a quick series of clicking sounds, more silence and then a final, definitive click. She depresses the switch hook, releases it, waits for the dialing tone to return and tries again, this time dialing '0'.

'Hello, caller – what number, please?' Telephone exchange operators usually sound calm to the point of blandness, but the woman's voice has a definite undercurrent of strain to it.

'Hastings 306, please,' says Sam, adding, 'I tried it directly just now and wasn't able to get through.'

'306,' the operator repeats. 'Would that be in Hastings Old Town, madam?'

'Yes – Steep Lane.'

'Indeed. I'm very sorry, madam. Most of the telephone wires there are down – that area seems to have suffered the most in the raid today.'

'I see. Thank you. Good day,' Sam adds, feeling suddenly a bit sick. She rings off. _We don't **know** anything,_ the thinks. _If I tell people, all that I'll do is to give them something more to worry about._

She stands in the silent office for a moment, then goes to the door and opens it. There's no one in the passage. As quietly as she can, she passes Brookie's office and then Mr Meredith's, leaves the station through the rear door and goes back to the car.

* * *

Matters proceed as normal at first: down Bohemia Road to White Rock Road, then to the seafront. _Turn left into the High Street, left again up Swan Terrace and right into Steep Lane,_ Sam reminds herself.

As she passes Robertson Terrace she begins to see what the raiders have done. Part of the Albany Hotel is gone, the wreckage still giving off smoke; so is a pub in Denmark Place, a few hundred feet further on. The A.F.S. are just leaving; there are plenty of Home Guard and A.R.P. sorts about, but no one tries to stop her from going on until she's in the High Street.

'I'm sorry, dear,' says an elderly woman with a _W_ on her helmet. 'There's no going through here, not now.'

'I'm on police business,' Sam tells her. _Not strictly true, of course – and not really a kindly lie, either,_ she thinks. _Nevertheless..._

'I didn't say that you _mayn't_ go through,' the woman replies, a bit snappishly now. 'One _can't. _Look!' she goes on, gesturing in the direction of Swan Terrace.

Sam does look – and gasps. The Swan Inn and its neighbors have been reduced to rubble and splinters. A stretcher party is carefully removing a casualty to a waiting van. A blanket covers the body from head to toe.

'Oh,' Sam says quietly.

'That won't be the last, I'm afraid – luncheon was in progress,' the warden observes.

Sam puts the car into reverse until she is back in Denmark Place and can turn it around. _Steep Lane does have a north end as well as a south,_ she reasons. _It's only a question of finding the way there._ She parks the car and opens its glove compartment, which is meant to, and does, contain a Royal Ordnance Map. After studying it for a few moments she arrives at a plan, although it means going all the way back to Albert Road and taking the long way 'round, straight through the West Hill recreation ground.

She decides that there's no time to lose; and when she presses the starter button once again she puts the car into fourth gear and begins ringing the bell. Before too long she's driven past the ancient ruins of Hastings Castle and emerged at the foot of Collier Road, only one street away from Steep Lane. Here she finds more trouble: fire trucks and an ambulance are gathered outside of a pair of badly bombed, smoldering houses, blocking the road.

'There's an emergency! I need to go down Steep Lane!' she shouts at a fire-fighter who seems to be on the verge of motioning for her to turn the car around. He looks at her doubtfully, then shifts his gaze to the car's police markings.

'Yeah, alright,' he says abruptly, and then adds, 'for all the good it'll do you.'

'What do you mean?' Sam moves from relief to alarm at lightning speed.

'Whole string of bombs fell between here and there – over the road as well. You might not be able to get through. Can always try, though! Half a moment,' the man adds.

'Thank you,' Sam says. The man goes to one of the fire engines, gets in and moves it to one side of the road, allowing Sam just enough space to move the car carefully past the incident site.

At the top of the street she turns into Steep Lane, following its curve as it bends southwards. She can still smell smoke, and there's another crowd of official vehicles and people in uniform ahead of her. Sure enough, twin fires are being dealt with: in the remains of a house to her left and in the thick growth of shrubbery to her right.

Sam rings the Wolseley's bell once more, drawing the attention of a Civil Defence worker. She explains the situation as briefly as she can. He waves her through and offers advice.

'You'd do best to leave the car by the side of the road and walk,' he tells her. 'There was an incendiary fell near to where the Lane curves towards the Channel. Shock waves broke a lot of windows. Street's likely full of glass by now, what with people cleaning up the mess.'

_Where Steep Lane curves – oh, dear God, no,_ Sam thinks, but she says only, 'Thank you.'

After driving another few hundred feet Sam finds a recess in the guard wall on the seafront side of the lane – it makes her think of an empty niche in a cathedral, waiting for a memorial to be placed in it – and leaves the car there. There's no one about just here, but _better safe than sorry,_ she thinks as she removes the distributor cap and packs it into haversack.

She begins walking down the lane. To her left she can see the tops of the houses in The Croft; two of them, neighbors, are missing parts of their roofs, and there are windows gone. She can hear shouted admonitions to hurry along and, contrariwise, to be careful.

After what seems like an age she approaches the densely-built lower end of Steep Lane. There is noise and activity here, and the smells of smoke, plaster dust and something damp burning.

_Where the Lane curves towards the Channel... _

Abruptly Sam sees what the man meant. Two houses where Steep Lane meets The Croft are completely wrecked and a third isn't much more than a shell. They're over the road from number 31, but the bomb has done its nasty work well and good: windows have been blown out all about her, and bits and pieces of architecture – trim blown clear off of buildings – are lying in the street amidst the glittering piles of broken glass.

The door of number 51 opens suddenly just as Sam is passing it, to reveal a woman of perhaps forty carrying a dustpan filled with bits of glass, which she is undoubtedly about to empty into the street.

'Ooh! You didn't half startle me!' the woman exclaims, sounding slightly aggrieved, as though Sam had precisely timed her arrival at this spot in order to add to the day's troubles. 'Have a care, dearie,' the woman goes on, adding, 'They've closed off Swan Terrace – you can't go in there, and the inn's a wreck in any case.'

'I'm _aware_ of that, and I'm not _trying_ to get _there,'_ Sam replies, realising as she does so that she too sounds rather indignant. _'I_ need to go to 31, Steep Lane,' she goes on, adding before she can stop herself, 'I'm on police business!'

This doesn't have the desired effect: the woman looks her up and down with narrowed eyes, then takes another step into the footpath, blocking Sam's way.

'That _isn't _a Woman Police Constable's uniform you're wearing! A _police_ uniform,' she announces with a triumphant air, 'is _blue.'_

'Quite right,' Sam replies. 'I'm in the Mechanised Transport Corps, but I'm _seconded_ to the police,' she goes on, 'and I'm here on a _police matter_ – official business!' She again recoils inwardly as she hears herself say this. _How easy it's become to lie,_ she thinks and wonders, not for the first time, whether this is the way a spy feels. 'I have a message to be delivered' – _There, that much is true enough_ – 'and I'm in a _great_ hurry, so if you _don't_ mind -'

'Someone up to no good, then, on top of everything else?' the woman shoots back, but she does step aside.

As Sam passes number 35 there is a sudden gust of wind, strong enough to dislodge a shutter from its now precarious perch by the first-floor window and leave it dangling in front of the house's front door. She steps towards the kerb in alarm, only to find herself about to tread on a small pile of glass shards. The large window in the first floor of number 33, she sees, is blown out.

'I _did_ say to have a care,' she hears the woman from number 51 call after her. She ignores this and presses on, though not without another twinge of guilt.

_Poor thing,_ she thinks. _She probably only wants someone to talk to._ At last, with relief, she rounds the corner, climbs the four steps to number 31, and sounds the familiar lion-faced knocker on the door.

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's note:**  
Andrew and Edith never cross paths in canon, but they do meet in my story _Fires Within Fires._


	8. Chapter 8

Sam is about to sound the knocker for a second time when she hears a familiar voice calling from above her.

'Yes?' And then more quietly, a surprised 'Oh!'

She looks up. Mr Foyle, in shirtsleeves, is leaning a bit precariously out of a second-floor window that has lost most of its glass and sash.

'Oh, do be careful, sir!' she cries.

'Wait there, Sam – be down in a moment.'

There is another pause, and then at last the door opens.

'Are you all right, sir? I tried to telephone but I couldn't get through. They said that the wires are down.'

'So they are. And I've got very little gas pressure and that broken window in the attic – only that one, thankfully – but yes, I'm fine. Very kind of you to be concerned, Sam. Are _you_ all right?'

'Oh, perfectly fine, sir! Milner and I were out on the Downs,' Sam explains. 'Jackson's Farm, in fact, if you remember that place, sir.' _You'll never **guess** what's happened!_ she wants to continue – but Mr Foyle might very well say that it's no longer any concern of his, and in any event there are far more pressing matters at hand. 'They didn't drop any bombs out there, and there were none anywhere near the station, either.'

'That's good to hear. Sam, er, ought you to be here, at this hour on a working day?'

Sam ignores this.

'Sir, would you be able to leave the house for a time?'

Foyle feels something freeze inside of him.

'Why, um, why do you ask?'

'Andrew's been injured, sir,' he hears Sam say. 'Not seriously, I think, but he _is_ in St Mary's. I thought that you'd want to go there, so I've brought a car.'

'Well, yes – Sam, how do you know this?' he asks, bewildered.

'Milner and I brought him there ourselves, sir,' she replies, with a faint note of pride in her voice. 'I can tell you all about it on our way, but I do think that we ought to set out as soon as we can – I had to leave the car some distance up the lane, and then we'll have to take the long way 'round. Swan Terrace, well... '

'Yes. Um, yes, I know. I'm meant to be waiting for the Superintendent – come to assess the damage. Need to leave a note. Just give me a moment. Oh – well, come in and sit down, Sam.'

'Thank you, sir. It _is_ likely to be a minor injury – a broken rib at most, is what Edith said.'

'Edith?'

'Edith Ashford, sir. Milner's... friend who's a nurse there.'

'Mm, yes, of course.' He has envelopes but can find no letter paper. He takes an envelope and writes on it:

_Have just learned that my son, on active service w RAF, was injured today. Gone to St Mary's Hospital to see him. Will make every effort to return before blackout begins. Only damage to house appears to be one broken window (2d floor front)._

_C. Foyle._

Then he folds the envelope, writes _Superintendent of Buildings_ on the exposed side and puts on his coat.

'Let's go, then,' he says. As they leave the house he inserts the envelope into the sliver of space between the door and the letter slot's frame and looks at it doubtfully. 'Hope for the best, I suppose.'

'I know that I said just now that I'd tell you all about it,' Sam explains as they climb the hill, 'but in fact I can't _quite_ do that, because Andrew couldn't tell _me,_ sir.'

'Wasn't _able_ to?'

'He isn't _permitted_ to, sir,' Sam explains, hearing the note of alarm, quiet but unmissable, in Mr Foyle's voice. 'Apparently whatever his reason for flying today, it didn't have to do with the raid. I'm sure that he'll tell you as much he can when he sees you, sir.'

'But he _can_ speak.'

'Oh, of course, sir! It really _isn't_ likely to be very serious. They'll probably send him home with you today for his crash leave. He'll be quite alright, really, sir – I'm sure of it.'

'Hm,' is Mr Foyle's only reply at first. Then he asks, 'You and Milner simply, um, stumbled across him?'

'I suppose that one _could_ put it that way,' Sam begins as they reach the car.

* * *

'And then they brought me here,' Andrew finishes up. 'It was quite a scene in casualty – must have been a pretty bad raid, although we didn't see anything on the way, sir, not to speak of.'

They've given him something for the pain and warned him not to put any weight on his left side, just in case. Over and over again, almost involuntarily, he has been glancing at the ward's entry door. He begins to wonder how this must look to his visitors, but he can't stop himself.

'How'd our chaps pull through, sir?' asks Chatto, standing with Goldston to one side of the bed while Wing Commander Turner sits in a chair on the other.

'Oh, splendidly. Foyle's our only casualty for the day,' WingCo notes. He looks slightly embarrassed after saying this, as though realising too late how it must sound.

'Marvelous,' says Andrew, in what might be a jocular tone, although no one laughs. 'What became of the Spit, sir, does anyone know?'

'Crashed into a farmer's field near Howling. Place called Ticklepenny's Corner, if you can believe it. Ruffled the farmer's feathers a good bit, apparently, but no injuries.'

'_That's_ good, at least. Was there a fire?'

'A small one. The A.F.S. dealt with it quickly. Look here, Foyle, you've nothing to apologise for,' Turner goes on. 'According to Chatto's and Goldston's accounts you did your job perfectly and dealt with circumstances exactly as you ought to have done. Don't look so morose.'

Andrew laughs, although there isn't much mirth behind it. He is bone-weary, and neither how well he'd performed nor even the extent of his injuries is the uppermost thing in mind. _They must be waiting for Dad to get here before they say anything about the x-ray,_ he thinks.

There's not a single empty bed in the ward; the hospital staff likely have their hands more than full. And an air raid is bound to mean that telephone lines, some of them anyway, are down. _Still, that nurse said she'd make sure Dad was notified,_ he thinks. _Must be the better part of two hours now..._

Quite suddenly it occurs to him that he knows some of the people in the other beds, if only by sight. _Our neighbours. Dad's neighbours. Oh, dear God..._

'Any word about where the bombs fell, sir?' he asks abruptly.

WingCo shifts slightly in his chair.

'Targeted hotels and pubs mostly, from what we've gathered.'

Andrew nods uneasily.

'I'll need to make out a combat report, sir, and fill in my log book,' he remarks.

'Good heavens, Foyle, plenty of time for that later,' WingCo tells him. 'You've got a week's crash leave coming, at the very least.'

'I was going to volunteer to take a recce over the target this afternoon,' Andrew muses aloud.

'Ye gods, Andrew,' Chatto interjects, nearly, but not quite, under his breath.

'Well, _that's_ obviously out of the question!' WingCo replies. 'That fellow Charlie Page is doing it. Ought to be airborne in... twenty-four minutes,' he adds, glancing at his wristwatch. Looking up, he rises to his feet. 'Ah! _This_ looks promising.'

Dad approaches hurriedly, looking as though he's trying to appear to be something other than worried sick, followed by Sam and someone who must be a quack, though it's not the one who'd examined Andrew and taken an x-ray ninety minutes earlier. Andrew, nearly dizzy with relief, sits up a bit too suddenly to avoid vexing his left side.

'Well, then. Andrew,' Dad begins.

'Hello, Dad. I, um... ' Andrew begins, and then trails off.

'Sam told me about it on the way here – what she could, at least.'

'Oh... _God,_ Sam, _thank you!'_

'Not at all,' says Sam. 'I couldn't reach your father by telephone so I went to the house myself. Happy to.'

'How _are_ you?' Dad goes on.

Sam slips past Wing Commander Turner and, as though taking up a duty post, stands next to the head of Andrew's bed. He looks better now than he had even ten seconds ago, but there's still a shadow around his face and behind his eyes. For an instant she imagines sitting down on the bed, or even...

_No. __**No**__._ _Don't be reckless. Don't be silly, for that matter._

An elderly man in the bed on Sam's other side begins coughing violently. A nurse pulls out the curtain between the beds until it extends nearly into the aisle. Sam turns her back to the wall and faces the center of the ward, standing nearly at attention, so close to the bed post that she can feel the end of the crossbar pressing into her arm.

'Not too poorly, really,' Andrew replies. 'Could've been a great deal worse.' He can't quite see Sam now, from this position, but she's there. That's enough. _Don't be an ass, of course it isn't – but it'll have to be_, he thinks.

'That's true, Flight Lieutenant. You were _quite_ lucky,' the doctor begins. She speaks with the remains of an East London accent and her white coat is too large for her: she's tiny, a fact that is emphasised, rather than the opposite, by the nimbus of dark hair that stands out from her head in stiff waves.

'I'm Dr Benjamin,' she goes on. Her gaze shifts from Andrew to take in both Dad and WingCo. 'Flight Lieutenant Foyle seems to have pulled just about every muscle from hip to shoulder on the left side, and his fourth and fifth ribs are a bit bruised, also on the left, but nothing's broken and there's no sign of concussion – though we need to be quite_ sure_ of that,' she continues, 'so we'll be keeping you here overnight, Flight Lieutenant.'

'I can't _possibly_ be concussed!' Andrew protests. 'I didn't strike my head on anything. I'm certain of that.'

'An abundance of caution is the hospital's policy,' Dr Benjamin answers coolly. She glances at the clipboard in her hand. 'As well, you gave us an address in Hastings Old Town.'

'My house,' Dad interjects.

'Mm. Most of the people who've been seen at this hospital today are from the same district – the point being, Flight Lieutenant,' the doctor explains, 'that you might be better off here for now in any case, given what conditions there are likely to be.'

'Only very minor damage to the house as far as I can tell,' says Dad. 'Broken window in the second floor, that seems to be all – but not much in the way of utilities, so, um, point taken, I suppose. Telephone lines are down in my street,' he adds.

'We've discovered as much,' Dr Benjamin replies.

'Might be a day or two before that's fixed. I'll return tomorrow, as early as I can manage – but in the event I'm delayed, how will I know when my son's been discharged?'

'Our lines at R.A.F. Hastings are still up – we can arrange for transport if you let us know,' WingCo offers.

'Thank you.'

Dr Benjamin makes a note on her clipboard.

'A week's leave is standard procedure after a crash, isn't that correct, Wing Commander?' she asks.

'Yes, that's right.'

'You'll need physiotherapy for the pulled muscles,' she explains, turning back to Andrew. 'We can provide that here, or we could make arrangements with Digby Manor if it'd be better to keep things within the R.A.F. I realise that's a burn hospital, but they're set up now to treat other convalescents when there's a need.'

Andrew nods, digesting this.

'How long do you think it'll be... ?'

'Before you can fly again? More than a week, I'd have to say – let's say ten days to begin with.' Dr Benjamin answers him, smiling for the first time.

A matron joins the group.

'Visiting hours are ending for today, I'm afraid,' she announces.

'Even for patients' families?' Foyle asks pointedly.

'We _must_ give the patients a chance to get some rest,' the matron replies in a voice that will brook neither objections nor pleading, and moves on.

'Well... right, then, we'll be pushing off,' the Wing Commander says. All of the airmen suddenly come to attention and salute, including Andrew, sitting up in bed. Foyle blinks, abruptly recalling a field hospital in France, the sights and smells and constant noise of the place.

Sam feels an impulse to salute in her turn, but fights it down. _They're not saluting __**me**_, she reminds herself.

'Yes, well... ' Foyle begins. 'Just let them look after you here for the night, Andrew. I'll be back tomorrow, as I said – early as possible.'

'Thank you, Dad. Don't worry – I'll be no trouble at all. On my best behaviour.'

'_There's_ something I'll believe when I see it.'

'Are you sure _you'll _be alright, though? What'll you do for meals?'

'Oh – I'll manage. I do have water and electricity, and there's that hotplate. Ought to be able to do something with that. We'd better be off, Sam,' Mr Foyle goes on, 'before they throw us out bodily.' He turns to follow Andrew's comrades-in-arms down the passage.

Sam comes back into Andrew's eye line as she leaves her place. She turns to face him as she does so, and he catches her hand in his.

'I keep saying "thank you",' Andrew observes. 'I can't think of anything else _to_ say – other than "I love you," in your case. Thank you for doing all of this. Thank you for coming back. I _do_ wish you could stay.'

Sam kneels by the side of the cot, so that her head is roughly level with Andrew's.

'So do I,' she says. 'Tomorrow's Friday – if you're discharged I'll try to come by your house tomorrow evening, and if I can't do that I'll visit you on Saturday, wherever you are.' This earns her a raised eyebrow, making Andrew look suddenly very much like his father. She laughs.

'Visiting a chap at his home, Sam – is that something a well-brought-up girl does?' Andrew asks, smiling, an unmistakably real smile this time.

'Only if _he_ is unable to visit _her_ and he specifically requests the visit. That's what I was always told.'

'Really? Well, then, yes – _please_ come to see me,' Andrew adds, more subdued now. His smile fades and he sinks back into the pillows.

_Battle fatigue,_ Sam thinks. _There it is. It's come back._

'Try to rest until then, Andrew,' she says.

'Today... didn't go as planned,' he tells her quietly.

Sam nods in what she hopes is an understanding way. _Well, no, I suppose that it didn't. He can't have expected that there would be a raid here while he was gone, or that he'd be shot down on the way home, or that his parachute would get tangled up in a tree... __**His parachute!**__ Oh, golly!_ She kisses Andrew's cheek, does so once more, and then stands up and takes her leave.

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's note:**  
Although the Mechanised Transport Corps was a civilian organization, the similarity of its uniform to that of the Auxiliary Territorial Service sometimes led military personnel to offer salutes, which M.T.C. members were instructed to return. This probably did nothing to improve strained relations between the M.T.C. and the A.T.S.: throughout the war, the A.T.S. seems to have viewed the M.T.C. as competing with it for qualified drivers and mechanics.


	9. Chapter 9

'Sir! Excuse me, please, sir!'

In her haste to deliver Mr Foyle to St Mary's, Sam hadn't noticed that she'd parked the Wolseley directly behind an R.A.F. vehicle. Now Mr. Foyle and the airmen stand chatting mid-way between the two cars. Sam approaches the group hurriedly.

Hearing her voice, Foyle turns to look at her, eyebrows raised, as she approaches, but she looks past him at Andrew's commanding officer. Wing Commander Turner begins to salute her as she comes to a halt and stands at attention, but stops in mid-gesture, visibly puzzled as he takes her in. This time Sam returns the mark of respect – more smartly, it strikes Foyle, than she might have done a few years ago.

'Samantha Stewart, sir,' she announces.

Turner continues to look at her in evident confusion, perhaps searching for a recognisable insignia on her uniform.

'Mechanised Transport Corps,' Sam offers. 'I'm seconded to the Hastings Police as... that is, I used to be Mr Foyle's driver, sir.'

'Ah. Yes, of course! We've met before... haven't we?'

'We have, sir.' Sam continues to stand at attention even as she feels her cheeks grow hot. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Mr Foyle trying, with mixed success, to hide a smile.

'Yes, I remember now. Thank you _very_ much for your help today, Miss Stewart, in extricating Flight Lieutenant Foyle and bringing him here,' Turner continues. 'If I recall correctly, this isn't the first time you've played a role in getting him out of a tight spot. Thank you for _that,_ as well.'

Sam is now quite sure that she's blushing.

'Don't mention it, sir,' she replies, adding a bit breathlessly, 'All part of the war effort. Sir, I have Andrew's parachute in the boot of the car,' she goes on, nodding towards the Wolseley, 'and his helmet and flying goggles as well.'

'Have you indeed? That's commendably thorough.'

'Thank you, sir. It was actually one of the gentlemen who witnessed Andrew's descent who gathered it all up. A Mr Hurst – he lives in Howling.'

'Ah. Well, in any event, I'll be happy to collect the small items – the harness as well, if you happen to have that.'

'I do, sir, in fact.'

'Good! But the parachute canopy's on its way to being obsolete.'

'Really, sir? How so?'

'Silk's being replaced by nylon.' Turner explains. 'Horrid stuff to touch, but it's been shown to be stronger and more stable than silk, it seems.'

'My goodness, what will happen to all of the silk parachutes?' Sam wonders. 'There must be a _great_ many of them!'

'Those we've retrieved are being sold to fabric wholesalers. Liable to flood the shops. The odd one that's got into civilian hands... I really don't know,' Wing Commander Turner tells her with a smile.

* * *

'Sir, there's something that I've been wanting to ask,' Chatto begins, as Goldston manoeuvres the car through a cluster of ambulances. 'One _strongly_ suspects that one ought to know this already, but the fact is that... one doesn't.'

Turner sighs inwardly, although he knows that he has no business doing so. Chatto is a top-drawer bomber pilot, no question about that, but something about him grates at times. He'd been a boy actor, of all things, and to Turner's ear his turns of phrase often carry an unnecessarily theatrical ring.

'Yes – what is it?'

'What's the procedure, sir, for putting a chap up for the DFC?'

* * *

At the police station Sam is greeted with pointed looks from Milner and Brookie but no requests that she explain her absence, least of all from Mr Meredith, who doesn't appear to have noticed that she'd left. It occurs to her now to wonder what will be waiting for her when she returns to her billet. She telephones her landlady, Mrs Hardcastle.

'No, everything's perfectly well, Miss Stewart,' Mrs Hardcastle tells her. 'I went out to the Anderson, of course, but it was a complete waste of time. You'd hardly know there _was_ a raid here.'

'Have you heard from any of the others?'

'From Nurse Prothero, yes. The young ladies in the Forces... we can only hope for the best, I suppose!'

'Yes.'

'Oh, there's the postman! I've a letter to give to him. I must fly!'

* * *

In an empty interview room Sam drapes the expanse of the parachute over the table and chairs and, as carefully as she can, folds it into a neat bundle which she wraps in brown paper and seals up with bits of Sellotape.

Just before half past five she brings the Wolseley – the 14/60 this time – around to the front of the station; at precisely half past Mr Meredith is ready to go home. She drives him there in silence, as always.

When she returns to the station she borrows a length of twine from Brookie and uses it to lash the parachute to her bicycle. Then she bicycles home, more slowly than usual in order to prevent her parcel from falling to the ground.

The day has started to catch up with her. She's quite tired. She decides that she will eat supper, write in her diary and go to bed.

* * *

When she arrives at Mrs Hardcastle's she finds everyone in the sitting room.

'Good evening,' Sam begins to say from the hall, before trailing off. All of them look extremely serious: glum, anxious, perhaps a bit shocked. Mrs Hardcastle's eyes are slightly red and she is extremely pale. 'Has something happened?' Sam asks. 'Is everyone alright?'

'We're all going to have to move house!' Helen wails.

'What? Why?' Sam demands.

'I'm afraid Helen's right,' says Penelope Robinson. 'You see -'

Mrs Hardcastle, having gathered herself together, cuts her short.

'I've been called up, Miss Stewart,' she explains. 'I received my papers in the afternoon post – just after you telephoned. I'm to report in ten days' time.'

Sam, still in the hall with the parachute in her arms, is thunderstruck. Felicity Prothero, standing nearest the door, slips into the hall and pulls Sam towards the kitchen.

'You remember she told us at Christmas that she was in the Wrens during the last war,' she whispers.

'Yes, but surely... '

'It seems she's younger than we realised – only forty-eight, apparently.'

'Golly!'

'And she's a widow with no children under fourteen years of age, so there it is.'

The two of them return to the sitting room together.

'Mrs Hardcastle – I don't know what to say!' Sam begins. 'You must be quite... ' She trails off, truly at a loss for words.

'A bolt from the blue, really,' her landlady supplies, 'but there's nothing for it.'

'No, I suppose not,' Sam agrees. 'I'm _sure_ that you'll do quite splendidly, though – just think how younger girls in the Wrens will look up to you!'

'That's true,' chimes Helen, a Chief Wren herself, before her voice takes a mournful turn, 'but what are _we_ going to do? Where shall we _go?'_

'I don't see why we need to go _anywhere,'_ Sam announces, feeling suddenly a bit less tired. 'There'll need to be someone looking after the house while Mrs. Hardcastle is away – why oughtn't it to be us?'

This is met with a startled silence at first.

'We _could_ do that,' Penny begins slowly, sounding a bit doubtful at first. 'We could take it in turns to do the marketing and the cooking and the tidying up.'

'Precisely,' says Sam. 'And we could all put our rentals into a kitty and take our household expenses out of that, and then put whatever is left over into an account for Mrs Hardcastle.'

'I've never cooked _anything,'_ Felicity points out. 'Not in my whole life. I've always lived at home – we, um, we employed a cook – or in a nurses' residence where meals were provided for us. I don't know the first thing about it, truly.'

'You can learn, though!' Helen replies with enthusiasm. 'My mam says _lots_ of people are learning to cook! She was a domestic science teacher before she married my dad, and now she gives cookery demonstrations at Webb's, and she told me that half the people who come are very _grand_ sorts whose cooks have all been called up! And the Food Ministry have been putting out a lot of... _taflenni,_ oh, what's the English word? I've forgot.'

'Leaflets?' Penny suggests.

'_That's_ it, thank you, Penny, leaflets – and the _point_ is, they're _for_ people who are first learning to cook! It would be a _great_ opportunity for you, Felicity!'

'We don't know that I'll be sent to the Wrens,' Mrs Hardcastle notes. 'I might be directed to work in that munitions plant in Britannia Road – although I think I might _prefer_ the Wrens to that.'

'Even if that _did_ happen, Mrs Hardcastle, you'd no longer have time to do all of the housekeeping by yourself, and _we_ could take care of matters _for_ you,' says Penny. 'I think Sam's idea is _quite_ good!'

'Thank you,' says Sam.

'Well... dear me,' Mrs Hardcastle begins. 'If I _did_ need to go away – and I suppose that I might even if I _were_ directed to industry – who would serve as your chaperone?'

There is another silence.

'Mrs Hardcastle, I think that... ' Felicity says at last. She trails off, then begins again, looking very solemn. 'I think that you might simply have to _trust_ us in that matter.'

'_Well,'_ Mrs Hardcastle says again, very quietly this time, sounding abashed.

Helen, who is facing the window, suddenly leaps to her feet.

'Oh, there's Craig!' she exclaims, just before the door knocker sounds. 'Shall we have a proper meeting about all of this tomorrow night, if everyone will be here?'

When this has been agreed to, and the door knocker has been heard once again, Helen departs for her evening out.

Just then Sam's stomach gives an audible rumble; the others laugh at this, except for Mrs Hardcastle, whose eyes widen in dismay.

'Goodness me – I was so shocked by _this,'_ she cries, waving the buff envelope in the air, 'that I've forgot to make anything for supper! It oughtn't to be _too_ difficult, though, if you don't mind me opening a tin or too.'

'Of course not,' Penny says, with more good cheer than Sam might have been able to manufacture at such a prospect, adding, 'We'll all pitch in!'

'Oh, yes, that's a very good idea,' Sam echoes nonetheless. 'This can be your first cookery lesson, Felicity.'

* * *

Supper having been eaten (tinned baked beans on a bed of mash, topped with scrambled eggs – dried ones, not shell eggs, much to the regret of all – and sprinkled with parsley, along with spinach seasoned with the last of Mrs Hardcastle's nutmeg), various topics not having to do with Mrs Hardcastle's news having been discussed (Sam's parcel, which she decides to describe only as 'something that I was given for safekeeping,' amongst them) and the dishes washed, dried and put away, Sam retreats to her room.

Seated at the little table that serves as both desk and vanity, she opens her diary, although it occurs to her that she really ought to write to her parents and let them know that she's all right. Thinking over the day's events, she comes to a standstill for quite some time as she considers where to begin.

* * *

Friday finds Sam back to her old routine – _or my **new** routine, really,_ she thinks – but she finds it even more difficult than usual to keep her mind on doing little or nothing. At half past nine she takes the police car she'd driven yesterday to a garage to put more fuel in it.

At 11 o'clock she tries to telephone Mr. Foyle but finds that service to Steep Lane has not yet been restored. Then she telephones St Mary's to ask after Andrew. No, she is told by a chilly, impersonal voice, he has not yet been discharged.

'Are you a relation?' the voice demands when she asks about his condition.

'No – I'm... a friend,' Sam explains.

'Information of _that_ sort is given out _only_ to members of the family,' the voice says – not in a kindly way, either, it strikes Sam.

'I see,' she replies, and goes on hurriedly, before the owner of the voice can ring off, 'Has he had any visitors?'

'Hm... a gentleman did come to see him, yes.'

'Is he still there?'

'I _did_ say the patient hasn't been discharged, Miss.'

'I meant his visitor.'

'_Oh!_ We really _haven't_ time to keep up with the comings and goings of _visitors!'_

Sam has an impulse to say that this makes the hospital sound like an ideal setting for all manner of crime, but she holds her tongue, thanks the unpleasant person with whom she's been speaking and rings off.

* * *

There is some satisfaction in discovering that yesterday's raid has made a strong impression on Fleet Street, although Hastings is of course referred to only as 'a South Coast city.' Some of the reportage leans heavily on sentiment ('Landmarks familiar to generations of holiday-makers are no more'), while other stories record such odd details as that of a woman carried on a stretcher out of one of the stricken pubs who apologised to her rescuers for putting them to so much trouble and then added, 'I do want my dinner.'

At the end of one paper's article she finds something added on almost as an afterthought:

R.A.F. ATTACK TARGET BY DAYLIGHT

A Mosquito of Bomber Command, escorted by a Fighter Command Spitfire, successfully attacked an industrial plant at Lauterbourg, near to the German border in the Alsace region of France, at mid-day yesterday. They encountered no enemy aircraft or anti-aircraft fire until their return journey, when they were confronted over the Channel by a Messerschmitt Bf 109, presumably returning from yesterday's South Coast raid. The Spitfire successfully engaged the enemy craft, but was sufficiently damaged in the course of the rendezvous that the pilot was forced to evacuate by parachute and is now recuperating from minor injuries in a local hospital. The Mosquito returned safely with pilot and navigator unharmed.

_**That's** what it was,_ she thinks.

Lunch in Mrs Threadgill's canteen – herring in oats, with potato salad and cabbage in mustard sauce – provides a pleasant, albeit brief, distraction.

Just as Sam is settling down afterwards in the waiting area to try to think of something more to _do,_ a happy surprise arrives: the door opens to admit her friend Glenda Lyle. On leave and out of uniform, she has come to commiserate with Sam (having heard a few bits about yesterday from Chatto), listen saucer-eyed to the news about Mrs Hardcastle and report the theft of her bicycle.

'When'd you notice it missing, and where'd you last see it?' Brookie asks with a barely audible sigh. He's taken down quite a few reports of this sort during the past several months. Bicycle mechanics and spare parts are both in very short supply, making the machines themselves very attractive to thieves.

'About half an hour ago, in William Lane,' Glenda relates. 'I went to the Sea Board Café to eat lunch. There were no spaces left next to the building, so I left my machine just opposite, next to the hedges over the road. I thought it would be easier to keep an eye on it that way in any case, but I wasn't given a table near either of the windows. I suppose a stouter lock might have helped, or a newer one,' she goes on ruefully.

Brookie makes a noncommittal sound and continues making notes.

'He'll look rather _silly,_ really, riding about on a ladies' bicycle,' Glenda remarks.

'You _saw_ the perpetrator, then, Miss?' Brookie enquires, looking up. 'I mean Subaltern – my apologies,' he adds.

'Only _just_ – I was just leaving the café – coming out of the door, you see – when I saw him riding off on my bike.'

'Can you say what 'e looked like?'

'Well... rather a _small_ man – not very tall, I should guess, and quite wiry, and – oh! His _hair_ was really rather interesting, you know – a sort of iron grey, like a flannel costume, and _very_ tightly curled, but in quite an _orderly_ way, almost as though it had been marcelled.' Glenda glances from Brookie to Sam and back again. They are both looking fixedly at her. 'I say, have I said something?' she asks.

'Strikes me,' Brookie says thoughtfully, 'that Mr Milner might want to 'ear about this.'

* * *

Milner taps the end of his end of his pen on his desk-top a couple of times, but is silent except for a quiet 'Hm.'

'Do I take it,' Glenda ventures, having just repeated to Milner what she'd told Brookie, 'that you know from my description who it was?'

'No, Subaltern, we _don't,'_ Milner answers her at once, before Sam can get a word in. 'However, the description you've given us _does_ match that of someone... who's of interest to the police, let's put it that way.'

'It must be -' Sam begins to say, but Milner forges ahead.

'Now, about the bicycle itself – was this a military bike?'

'No, it's my own,' Glenda tells him.

'Could you describe it, please? Any distinguishing features?'

* * *

'But it fits in _perfectly!'_ Sam insists. Glenda has taken her leave.

'We have _no_ way of knowing whether it was same man who committed yesterday's assault, much less whether _either_ man was Walter Saxby,' Milner replies. He's beginning to look and sound annoyed; Sam half expects him to ask her to leave his office and let him get back to work.

'He knew how to pick Glenda's lock,' she points out, undaunted, 'which is _precisely_ the sort of skill a _spy_ might very well have.'

'And those are two _more_ things that we don't know, Sam! We've never established that Saxby _is_ a spy... because we _have_ no way of doing that, and in any case the man who stole your friend's bicycle may _not_ have picked the lock. He may simply have filed through the shank.'

'Picking the lock, if he knew how, would be quicker and would attract less attention.'

'That's true,' Milner concedes after considering this for a few seconds. Sam decides that in any event it would be best to return to the waiting area now, or perhaps to visit the cloakroom or the kitchen. She is just standing up when the telephone rings.

'Milner here. ... Yes, she _is_ still here. ... Oh, I see! Hold on, please. It seems you're wanted on the telephone, Sam.' Milner rises as well as he hands her the receiver, and he quietly leaves the room.

'This is Sam.' Her suddenly tense voice startles her, and a picture comes to her of a coil ready to spring.

'Stand by, please, Miss Stewart,' she hears Brookie say. 'Got a surprise for you.'

There is a silence, a click and then Sam hears Mr Foyle's voice.

'Sam?'

'Yes, Mr Foyle! How is... everything?' There's too much noise in the background for him to be calling from his house, she decides. 'Where are you, sir?'

'Oh – they've set up a call office in the Bourne. The lines in Steep Lane are still down. Look, Sam, Andrew was discharged about an hour ago.'

'How _is_ he?' _Steady on,_ she thinks.

'He's, um, he's all right – but the point is that he's gone to bed and I hope he's asleep by now. Seems he got little or no sleep last night.'

'That wouldn't surprise me at _all,_ sir! I can remember from when _I_ was in hospital last year – the other patients were always _quite_ noisy at night.'

'Mm. Well, the point is, I don't think it would be terribly helpful for anyone to call on him this evening – not even you, Sam, I'm afraid.'

'No... I suppose not.'

'Tomorrow's Saturday. Why don't you come to see him at about midday?'

'Oh, _yes,_ sir, I _shall!_ Jolly good!'

'Don't worry about anything in the meantime, Sam,' Mr Foyle goes on. 'It's just as you said. He's going to be perfectly fine.'

•••••••••••••••  
**Author's notes:  
**Most parachutes used by the Allied forces during the first half of the World War II were made of either cotton or, more often, silk. The former was often blended with nylon for stability, and by 1943 it was determined that nylon was a better choice than either silk or cotton. (Acetate was sometimes used as well.) Throughout the war, parachutes were manufactured in a variety of sizes; those issued to fighter and bomber personnel were usually 24 feet (about 7.3m) in diameter. Wing Commander Turner's prediction that leftover silk parachutes (actually parachute sections) would "flood the shops" came true, but apparently not until 1945.

By early 1943 (I am unclear as to the exact date) Parliament had amended the National Service Act No. 2 to include many women between the ages of 19 and 43 – or even 50, in the case of those who had served in the First World War.

With the exception of London, targets of air raids went unnamed in the British press, referred to only as "a South Coast town," "a Midlands city," and so forth, even in coverage of local events. American news outlets covering the war in Europe followed suit.


	10. Chapter 10

On Saturday morning Sam stands for a long time before the wardrobe. She decides at last on the dress with the yellow flowers and blue leaves: nice enough that Andrew ought to notice and be pleased, but not so nice that she'll worry about it if they end up sitting on the ground. It's far from new, but it doesn't seem to be much the worse for wear. With that on she does her hair, pulling it back gently from the sides of her face and fixing it in the back with the nicer of her two remaining slides.

_Nothing too fiddly, that seems best,_ she thinks. Then she goes downstairs to breakfast.

After the meal – a slice of toast with margarine, porridge, half a stewed apple, and a single rasher of bacon, but no egg, the last of the household's supply having been used for Thursday's supper – she stands before the larder and considers.

_It would be awfully nice to bring something to eat – but what?_ she wonders. It won't do to pilfer the household's rations, of course, but Mrs Hardcastle seems to have had a bit of a windfall in off-coupon goods this week: two new heads of lettuce gaze back at her, this morning's loaf isn't even half gone, and there's an entire unsliced loaf still waiting. _Sandwiches, then. How dreary – but after all there _is_ a war on. Must be practical._

Sam cuts four slices of bread; then she washes two lettuce leaves and dries them carefully. She spreads mustard on one slice of bread and Military Pickle on another, places the two lettuce leaves on top of the mustard and tops off each slice of bread with another one. Then she cuts each sandwich diagonally, stacks them up neatly and wraps the whole thing in a page of yesterday's newspaper.

Back in her room, she retrieves the spare blanket from the wardrobe and the parachute and the twine from the foot of the bed, makes a stack of them and the sandwiches and takes all of it outside to her bicycle. The sandwiches and blanket go into her basket and she lashes the parachute to the again. Very slowly, she bicycles to Mr Foyle's house.

* * *

Hastings Old Town has been patched up a bit since Thursday – streets swept largely free of debris, shattered windows covered with cardboard – but Sam can't bring herself to look down Swan Terrace as she rides past.

She dismounts her bicycle outside Mr Foyle's house, digs out her lock from the bottom of the basket and attaches the bike to the fence directly underneath the center sitting-room window, eyeing the arrangement a bit doubtfully as she does so. _Just have to hope for the best_, she thinks. Then she unties the parachute, stacks her cargo once more and contemplates climbing the front steps with all of it in her arms.

Mr Foyle appears just then, emerging from the twitten over the road with what must be at least two newspapers tucked under his arm.

'Hello, Sam.' He greets her calmly. 'How are you?'

'Oh, perfectly well, sir! How is everything here?'

'About as you'd expect, I suppose – still no telephone, but they've told us it'll be fixed by tonight. The electricity's fine, though, and the gas seems to be back to normal.'

'How's the patient?'

'Um, physically, a good deal better, I'd say. A district nurse came by this morning – told him to take things easy for a few days and left some aspirin, but she seemed quite pleased. Friend of yours, I gather. Prothero.'

'Oh, yes – Felicity. And... otherwise?'

'Wellll – you saw Andrew once before when he was injured and convalescing, as I recall.'

'I did, sir,' Sam agrees. 'It doesn't agree with him.'

'No.'

Sam hesitates for an instant before continuing:

'Is he feeling at all... worn out, do you think, sir?'

'That might well be part of it,' Mr Foyle replies, after pausing in turn. 'Hasn't had much to say about what led up to Thursday's, um, incident.'

'I don't believe he's allowed to say _why_ he was flying.'

'No. No, of course he isn't. There _was_ an item in the paper yesterday, though.'

'I saw that, sir.'

'Mm. I showed it to him. He admitted it was him, but that's all. I'm _quite_ sure he'll be pleased to see _you,_ though.'

* * *

'Look who I found loitering outside – bearing gifts, from the looks of it,' Mr Foyle announces from the hall.

Andrew has abandoned his usual chair by the fire this morning in favor of the sofa, sitting at one end with a book in his hand, back towards the door. He looks behind him and lights up when he sees Sam, but it is the pale light of a January sun.

'Hello, Andrew,' Sam says.

She places her parcels at the sofa's other end and sits down in the middle, next to Andrew. They both glance toward the hall. They can hear Andrew's father moving about there, but he seems to be busying himself with something at the kitchen end. Sam leans forward towards Andrew, although it's difficult to say who kisses whom.

'How are you?' she asks.

'Not too bad, really. Can't complain. The hand's a lot better.' The bandages on Andrew's left hand have been replaced by a couple of sticking plasters.

Sam looks at him carefully, hoping without much confidence that he won't notice that she's doing so, although if he does he makes no sign. The pall behind his eyes is still there, but it strikes Sam that this isn't battle fatigue after all: something else is wrong.

_If I ask him what the matter is, he won't tell me,_ she thinks.

'What have you got there, Sam?' Andrew asks.

'Oh – I made some sandwiches – nothing terribly exciting, I'm afraid. And I brought a blanket, because I thought we might go somewhere and have a picnic, but that really _isn't_ a very practical idea, is it? You'd have trouble sitting down on the ground, I expect. And I'm not at all sure of how we'd get to a good spot.'

'I'm afraid you're right – and your friend Felicity popped in and told me not to exert myself much.'

'Yes, your father told me she was here.'

'I know what we _could_ do, though,' Andrew says, brightening a bit. 'Go out to the garden and sit on the bench there.'

* * *

'There used to be a greenhouse there,' Andrew recalls, nodding towards the Anderson shelter. 'We grew things like tomatoes and onions in it – or tried to, at any rate. After Mum died it began to go to seed – it was always rather her area – and Dad had it removed before the Anderson was installed. He's never been much for gardening. I'm sorry, Sam,' he adds, shaking his head. 'Not very interesting, really.'

Sam, with her mouth full of sandwich, squeezes his hand with her free one. _It doesn't matter,_ is what her hand says.

A little iron table holds the three remaining half sandwiches and two tumblers of water. Andrew shows no interest in eating or drinking.

'I still don't know what you and Sergeant Milner were doing the middle of nowhere on Thursday,' he says.

'That's part of my news! I have all _sorts_ of news if you'd like to hear it,' she tells him after she's finished swallowing. Andrew nods – a bit absently, perhaps, but Sam decides to take it as an invitation to continue. 'We'd been visiting a farm outside of Howling – we'd been there before, actually, two years ago with your father, when a dead German parachutist was found nearby and then there was a murder on the farm.'

'What happened this time?'

'A girl in the Land Army was... violently assaulted. Although I _must_ say that she seems to have been _more_ than equal to her attacker – she flipped him over onto his back, it seems, and he ran off.'

This draws no reaction at all from Andrew, which is concerning, but Sam carries on.

'There were two witnesses – they were both children, actually, but at any rate all three gave the same description of the suspect. It seems that he looks _very_ much like a man called Walter Saxby whose house was burgled last November. The place was ransacked, but the _only_ things that were taken were his passport and his driving license, and _he's_ been missing since shortly afterwards! And the girl who was assaulted on Thursday looks a bit like our old friend Miss Josephine Bow, or Augusta Bell or whatever her name may actually be. _She_ was seen _repeatedly_ near Mr Saxby's house before the burglary! They're both spies – that's what _I_ think.'

'Hm.'

'And then yesterday Glenda Lyle's bicycle was stolen, and you'll never _guess_ – she _saw_ the thief just as he was riding off, and from what she told us it looks as though it was the same man!' She stops short. 'This isn't really very exciting, is it.'

Andrew blushes.

'Of course it is. I... I'm awfully sorry, Sam – I can't seem to focus on anything happening outside of myself at the moment.'

Sam takes another nibble of her sandwich, and waits.

After a moment Andrew begins again.

'I killed someone on Thursday, Sam,' he says. 'The chap in the Messerschmitt.'

Sam swallows her bite of sandwich, sets the remainder on the table and puts her hand in Andrew's once again. He grasps it, not quite tightly but even so in much the way one might hold on to a lifeline.

'It wasn't the first time, of course – I do know that. I have four confirmed kills and two probables, for whatever that's worth. This was different, though. I _saw_ it,' Andrew explains. He tells her about the dogfight, the splintered windscreen and seeing the German pilot rear up in surprise and fail to evacuate. 'I shot straight into his cockpit and killed him, and I saw him die,' he concludes.

His voice has gone slightly out of control, to his chagrin, and he realises with even greater dismay that his eyes have filled. No sobbing, but a tear begins to roll out of each one; Sam begins to reach up with her free hand, but he brushes them away himself before she can do so.

She is silent for a moment, thinking about what she ought to say. She's got to say _something,_ she knows that. _But it would be awfully bad if it were the **wrong** thing,_ she thinks.

'Well... of course, he would have killed _you,_ or tried to, if you'd given him the chance,' she ventures.

'That's true. You're quite right, Sam. Already had, in fact. Nicked the Spit pretty badly, as it turned out – that's why I had to evacuate.'

'I know. I saw the newspaper yesterday.'

'And it was only by chance that I shot _him_ along with his 'plane. I do know _that_ as well.'

There is another silence before Sam speaks again.

'I'm so sorry, though, Andrew, that you _have_ to know those things,' she says finally.

Andrew looks at her gratefully. _There,_ she thinks,_ that was the right thing!_

'Your father,' she goes on, 'was a soldier in the last war, wasn't he?'

'He was. I asked him once, in fact, if he'd killed anyone. That was in 1940. I'd only just got my wings.

'What did he say?'

Andrew sighs.

'Only that yes, he had, and that you get through it – and that that's all he _could_ say.'

_Not especially helpful, sir,_ Sam thinks reproachfully.

Andrew falls silent again, then brightens a bit and turns to face Sam.

'That conversation ended when there was a knock at the door,' he relates, 'and Dad told me to answer it – and that it was his driver.'

'Oh – golly! You don't mean... ' She trails off. 'Did I really walk in on something that... important?'

'Well, you were hardly _intruding,_ Sam – I'm the one who invited you into the house, after all!' They both laugh a bit at the memory.

'Do you know what I wish that I could do?' Sam asks suddenly. 'I wish that I could be at the airbase whenever you come back from an op, or... a mission, or whatever you might be returning from. I'd have the car there – well, I'd have _a_ car there, at any rate, but regardless, I'd bring it as close to the end of the landing strip as they'd let me, and when you got out of your 'plane I'd bundle you into the car and take you off to somewhere quiet, where you could rest.'

'I'd like that,' Andrew replies. 'That sounds marvelous, actually – I'd like it very much indeed.' He is silent for a brief moment, looking at her. 'That's a pretty dress,' he tells her.

'Thank you.'

'Thank you for listening to me natter away, Sam.'

'I'd _hardly_ call it nattering!' Sam exclaims. 'You look a bit better now then you did when I got here,' she adds.

'I _feel_ a bit better, actually. Sam,' Andrew goes on, 'would you stay with me?'

'I'm sorry?'

'In the quiet place you'd take me to after an op. Would you stay there with me?'

'Oh! If you wanted me to, I suppose.'

'I _would_ want you to – most definitely, Samantha.'

Well... yes, then.'

Three things occur to Sam in quick succession as she says this: that it would sound to some people like being ready and willing to place herself in a compromising position; that she is not entirely certain that she cares; and that her mouth probably tastes of Military Pickle.

There is only just space for the two of them on the garden bench. They are already sitting shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knee to knee, Sam on Andrew's right. Andrew needs only to turn his head, which he does, intending to begin by kissing Sam's cheek; but she has already begun turning her head towards him.

Their hands meet an instant after their lips do, and then their tongues, which is wonderful; but when Andrew reaches around both of them with his left arm, wishing to draw Sam even closer if it were possible, she feels him wince a bit and hears him inhale sharply, and breaks off.

'Oh! Did I hurt you?'

'No, of course not. My own stupid fault!' he gasps. _And just as well,_ he thinks. _Much more of that and I'd be left with a problem I can't decently solve._

But when the pain in his side subsides he turns back to Sam, who has put her arms rather carefully around him, and leans his head towards hers. For a few moments they sit together in silence, their foreheads touching, Sam's left hand resting lightly on the nape of Andrew's neck.

'Thank you for coming here today, Sam,' Andrew says at last.

'Nothing could have kept me away,' Sam replies. 'Would you like something to eat, Andrew? There's the other half of a Military Pickle sandwich, and the other one is mustard and lettuce. I'm afraid that's all that I could find without digging into everyone's rations.'

'It sounds delightful. I'll try the pickle to begin with. You said you had all sorts of news,' he goes on, 'but all you've told me about is this chap you think is a spy. What else are you going to tell me about?'

'Oh! Well – you'll never _guess_ what's happened! My landlady's been called up!'

Andrew freezes with a corner of the sandwich an inch from his mouth.

'But... ' he begins.

'They're calling up women as old as _fifty_ now, if they served in the last war! Mrs Hardcastle was in the Wrens, and it seems she's only forty-eight.'

'But, Sam, that's awful! You'll have to move house!'

_'No_ – we've persuaded her to let us stay on and run the house ourselves! We're going to open an account at Southern Bank and put our rental money into it for Mrs Hardcastle to use when she's demobbed. We all met together last night and decided. We're also going to do all of the housekeeping and so forth for ourselves,' Sam goes on, 'which I suppose will mean that I'll have a bit less free time'

'Mmm. Not entirely sure I like _that_ part of it. Sam – you're all going to live there by yourselves, though?'

'Well, yes. We're not children, you know. We _can_ look after ourselves!'

'No, of course you can – but... well, after all, Miss Stewart, who'll chaperone?'

'Mrs Hardcastle asked that very question!'

'Did she really? Who'd ever have thought that your landlady and I would be worried about the same thing?'

Sam laughs.

'We _did_ promise her that we would... maintain established standards of decorum – that's how Felicity put it – which means no gentlemen callers, I suspect,' she explains.

'And no caddish ones either, I suppose – well, that's _some_ comfort, at least. Felicity was here this morning, you know.'

'Yes, your father told me.'

'Didn't say a word about any of this.'

'That doesn't surprise me, really. She's a bit like your father in that way, I think – she likes to keep the different parts of her life separate if she can. Would you like some water, Andrew?'

'Yes, thank you. What's in the parcel you brought into the house, Sam?' Andrew asks.

'It's your parachute. Your commanding officer said that it's obsolete -'

'Ugh, I know – next one'll be nylon! Nasty stuff!' Andrew puts in, groaning a bit.

'It isn't at _all_ bad for stockings, actually, from what I've heard! But at any rate I thought that... well, it did save your life – the parachute, I mean – so I thought that you might want to have it.'

Andrew chews on a bite of his sandwich, swallows, takes a sip of water and is silent for a time, looking thoughtfully at Sam.

'You hold on to it, Sam,' he says at last. 'I can't think what I'd do with it, really, but I imagine _you'll_ find a good use for it... sooner or later, I mean.'

_FINIS_

••••••••••••••••  
**Author's note:**  
Neither bread nor fresh vegetables were rationed during the war.


End file.
